Eventually we refixed the north pole approximately, pending such time as the Head of Affairs should arrive, when I knew we could rely on the small compass at the end of his watch chain. But Virginia, who uses the weathercock more than most of us, as she sees it from her bedroom window, and says it is so useful to dress by, was lugubriously certain his watch would be stolen on the next journey down, and begged me to place the arrow—still asleep—pointing south; even an approximate south, she said, might at least help to keep her spirits up, when a northeaster was blowing.
And south it remaineth unto this day, despite all our blandishments, and probably will do so till the end of the War, when the retirement of the Food Controller—who, presumably, supervises weathercocks—may permit of our using a modicum of grease.
The old wood-house (which, by the way, was originally used for coals, though no trace of this is left upon its clean, lime-washed interior) is the first building you run across as you enter by the top gate, which is the widest entrance we possess. Here you step from the lane right into a tiny larch plantation, and the path to the cottage is arched over with the boughs of the trees, while the brown cones crunch under your boots, or roll away down the steep incline of the path when your foot touches them. It was among these trees that a small clearing was made in the distant past to accommodate this particular out-building; though why the coal-house was considered the most artistic bit of bric-à-brac to greet you as you enter the main gate is not clear.
The actual outline of the building is not remarkable, being merely four walls and a pointed roof, with a door and a window; but at least it looks simple, dignified, and solid, and what it lacks in architectural decoration has been supplied by Nature herself. When we first saw it, we called it the private chapel; but later on I found Abigail & Co. calling it the picture palace.
At any rate, there it stands, shadowed by great oaks seemingly immovable, with their gnarled wide-stretching arms spread as in blessing over the lowlier woodland things; a big Spanish chestnut, though tardy in coming into leaf, scatters worthless burrs around later on, with generous goodwill; a walnut-tree invites the passer-by to rub its aromatic leaves, and is there any treasure-trove quite like the walnuts that one finds in the long wet grass on a windy autumn morning? Larches and firs make shady colonnades, with their straight uprising shafts, and dark drooping branches; silver birches, always graceful, no matter how they may have had to twist their trunks to accommodate themselves to their environment, give lightness and vivacity to the whole.
Incense there is in abundance. The warm resinous odour of the larches is always abroad; mountain-ash-trees load the air with scent in the late spring, and are ablaze with crimson in August. Two or three lichen-covered, twisted old apple-trees hang out bunches of pale-green mistletoe, for all to see during the winter months, and then surprise one with a bride-like flush of white and pink in the spring. Where the sun is brightest, a big hawthorn carpets the ground with white petals in May.
Then there are the lovely limes—and the lime-tree is much more of a stately lady than is realized by those who only know the sad, maimed and distorted stumps that disfigure suburban gardens in London. But see this lime-tree that forms a link in the Squirrels’ Highway! Its trunk measures about ten feet round. Under the shadow of its drooping far-sweeping branches you could give a small Sunday-school treat. Though the lowest branches spring from the trunk at least nine feet from the ground, their far ends touch the grass, forming a complete tent of translucent green and gold as you look upwards, through a multitude of layers of leaves, to a sun you cannot see, but which seems to have turned the whole tree into a rippling mass of molten colour. And when it shakes out its bunches of scented yellow blossoms, and trails them by the thousand down each branch and stem, then indeed the lime-tree is a lovely lady, and the bees and the butterflies come from far and near to pay her homage.
And each tree has a special and distinct winter-beauty of its own in the outline of branches and stems and twigs—a beauty that is lost to us once the leaves appear, but which suggests an exquisite etching in winter when the dark lines are silhouetted against the sky. The most graceful is the birch, with its light tracery of fine filaments, often with tassel-like catkins dangling at the end. The oak and beech give the impression of enormous strength in the ease with which they fling outright their massive arms with seldom any tendency to droop.
And each tree has its special and distinct melody when the wind signals the forest orchestra; there is the sea-surge of the beeches, the swish of the heavily plumed firs, the rain-sound of the twinkling aspen, the soft whisper of the birches, the æolian hum of the pines, and the sibilant rustle of the dead leaves still clinging to the winter oak.