I started the bonfire—not with newspapers, these are far too few and precious; why, our very paper bags are smoothed out and treasured in a dresser drawer; some done-with straw and dry leaves make a good beginning, with some of the dead twigs from the larches. If there are laurel clippings to put on next, and there usually are, then success is assured.
Soon the flames were licking up my initial work, and I proceeded to pile on hedge trimmings, the sweepings-up of an apple-tree that had blown down and been sawn up—and how sweet they made the air! Thistles, nettles, brambles, surplus raspberry canes that spring up everywhere, a holly-bush that had lately been cut down, worthless gooseberry bushes, piles of ivy that had been cut from the walls, more barrow-loads of stuff tipped on by Ursula—how the laurel flared and the yew crackled, and one’s eyes smarted as the smoke swept round like a whirlwind and enveloped one at times! I am a great believer in the burning of all refuse vegetation; it does away with so much blight and vermin and plant disease, and clears out mosquito haunts, and is generally sanitary.
Virginia had betaken herself to cooler climes, but Ursula and I worked at that heap, forking on new stuff to stop up flame bursts, till we too were shedding dew from our foreheads, and our hands were almost sore with wielding the heavy forks.
Yet a fascination keeps you at it, till you are smoke-dried and fire-toasted and arm-aching to the last degree. When the shades of evening finally call you in (as a rule, meals are most perfunctory when a bonfire is in progress) you are saturated from head to foot with the bonfire, your very hair has absorbed the time-old pungent odour of the smoke of forest fires.
And maybe months and months afterwards you open a seldom used wardrobe, where old gardening gear and shabby mackintoshes are kept, and suddenly you are overwhelmed with the scent of burning pear and birch leaves and yew; the lure of the woods calls aloud to you; you feel the sweep of the winds on the hills alternating with the great swirls of grey-blue bonfire smoke; the cramped town vanishes, and you are in free open spaces once more——
And all because a certain tweed skirt, or light gardening coat is hanging in the corner of the wardrobe.
If you want a bonfire with a delicious scent that will haunt you with a poignant memory long after its ashes have gone the way of all things, pile up dead apple leaves and twigs, pine needles, beech leaves, the trimmings of the sweet bay bushes, brambles, rose-stalks and larch—and the incense of the forest will be yours, bringing with it a mystic sense of nearness to primæval things that no perfume sold in cut-glass bottles has yet been able to conjure up.
We didn’t wait till sun-down, however, that day; for we were in the most thrilling part of the afternoon forking-up, and our complexions were at their very, very worst, when Abigail tripped out and announced: