The Worn Doorstep

by Margaret Pollock Sherwood

It proves quite a day for adventure, and yet I have not been beyond my garden wall. As I sit on my threshold to watch the sunset, I see, pausing at that open gate, a tired-looking woman, with her baby in her arms. She starts to move away, but I speak to her, and she enters; at first glance I know that she is neither tramp nor beggar and half divine her errand. Yes, she is a soldier's wife; he is going in a few days to the front, and she is walking a good part of the way from the north of England to his training camp at Salisbury Plain, to let him see and say good-bye to the baby on whom he has never set his eyes; it is only seven weeks old and was born after he volunteered. She had money enough to come only a certain distance by train.

The mother is a north-country woman, with a touch of Scotch about her, clean and sweet, though a bit dusty with the long road. Of course I take her in for the night; we have a wee guest-chamber. Don and the kitten and I try to make friends with the baby, but it merely howls. Madge wanted to keep the travellers in the kitchen, but I would not permit this and said that my soldier's wife must dine with me. I forgot to say, I took it for granted that Madge would know enough to lay another cover at table and was not prepared to see the stranger in your place. Naturally, though I winced, I could not make any change, and there she sat, a bit awed; probably she would have been happier in the kitchen with the baby; but she brightened up and told me some of the border legends, when she found that I already knew some. My desire to take her out of your chair lasted through the soup and half-way through the modest roast; when we reached the salad, there was a hurt sense somewhere within me that it was right. I had become a Christian by the time the dessert came on, and in the afterglow by the fire, while she sang her baby to sleep most enchantingly with an old north-country song, I resolved to do just this: keep your chair for wandering guests, fugitives from these highways and hedges. Your intense present life with me, your subtle nearness needs, after all, no help from outer object or material thing. Alas for my blockade!… Forts are proving useless, the war news says.

It sets me to thinking, and I sit by the fire long after my guests have gone to sleep. After all, it seems a pity to work so hard over a house and to get it ready, unless you get it ready for something. I don't know how it could be managed in a maiden lady's home, but what if I resolved that all the things that should happen in a house should happen here? In my heart of hearts I know, in spite of this blinding sorrow, that I do not want to be shut off from the main streams of human life. They used to tell me that I have a genius for home; suppose I establish this as a wee home in a warring universe for the use of whomsoever? Not a Home with a large H, but a little home, with a dog and a cat and a singing teakettle. The Lord did not make me for great causes,—not for a philanthropist, nor a leader of men, nor a suffragette. I have no understanding of masses of mankind, and so am lost in this era, and hopelessly behind the times. Life seems to me, as it did to my grandfather, primarily as the conscientious fulfilment of individual obligation, which inevitably reaches out to other lives. The troubles of individual men and women and children I used to understand, to try to help; perhaps I can again. Though it means confessing that I belong to a type of woman rapidly becoming extinct, all my life long I have felt that I should be content with a hearthstone and threshold of my own, with natural relationships and real neighbours. If I can understand and pity and try to help, why am I not doing it now, pig that I am? Birth, and death, and marriage, and hours of common life! Ah, if the little red house could only lend itself once more to all human need!

October 15. My Jeannie Deans is gone; she was in such haste that she could hardly wait for her breakfast. I got mine host to drive her to the station, for I shall not let her walk the rest of the way, and I gave her all the money I could find in the house, including all I could extract from Madge's and Peter's pockets, and from Madge's broken teapot. Unfortunately, it was not so much as I could have wished, but it will provide for a few days. Now we haven't ha'pence in the house; so much the better, if the burglar with whom I am threatened by the boding village gossips should call; but I must drive over to Shepperton, the market town, and call at the Outland and County Bank, and get some of those clean, crisp, dainty notes that are a delight to touch.

It seems lonely without Jeannie; Peter has gone away over hill and dale to get fertilizer for my garden; my house is empty, swept, and garnished—I have been dreading the moment when everything would be done. I carry on Madge's education, for I am trying to teach her English history. Yesterday it was William the Conqueror; she did not believe a word of it, but she very politely said: "Just fancy!" Most of these people know so little of their own history that they scorn the idea that anything unfortunate ever happened to England and scoff at a statement that she has ever been worsted in a fight. It has always been as it is, the King on the throne, the Vicar in the pulpit, the Squire at the Hall, and the island secure from all attack. To butcher and baker and candlestick maker in the village, danger or threatened change is inconceivable; England's past defeats sound to them like fairy stories devised by enemies, though they lend a willing ear to the tale of England's triumphs. Going back to ancient times, I told Madge about the Danes and their landing on this coast, about the burning and pillaging done by these wild folk: all that she remarked was: "How awkward!" I could not get her to entertain for a moment the idea, though we are only a few miles from the North Sea, that the enemy could ever land on English shores. "Hengland rules the seas," and that is all there is to it. Antwerp has fallen, but even this does not shake the prevailing sense of security. Antwerp is not England!

In contemporary matters Madge is quite interested; she thinks great scorn of the suffragettes: "Breaking the windows, 'm, and biting Mr. Hasquith, 'm; it's not for ladies to be taking part in public matters; they 'aven't it in them!" I reminded her of Queen Elizabeth, but she had never heard of Queen Elizabeth, and refused to entertain the idea that any such woman had ever ruled England. Even the tale of the Virgin Queen boxing the courtiers' ears she disbelieved with the rest. She admitted Queen Victoria, but said that it was "so different, 'm, and she a mother and a grandmother."

Some of this went on while Madge was doing up the guest room; she wanted simply to spread the coverlid over the bed, as it probably would not be used again for a long time. I insisted, however, that the bed be made ready with fresh sheets; some one might stop at any minute, I explained. Madge looked at me with question in her eye; her impression of me up to this point is that I am an amiable lunatic who may at any minute change to violence.

After luncheon I made Peter go and get the pony for me; yes, the pony is now exclusively my own, for as long a time as I wish. He is almost the most interesting personality I have ever known,—wilful, conscientious, full of conviction in regard to what he considers his duty and what he looks upon as his privileges. There are spurts, attended by dashing heels and swishing tail, of strict and spirited performance of his allotted tasks; there is peasant stubbornness, attended by stiffened legs and tenacious hoofs, of resistance to evil. He is British, or Scotch, to the core. Evidently he feels that his ancestors had a hand, a hoof, I mean, in the Magna Charta, and all the liberty that is coming to him he means to have, and all the obligations resting upon him he means to fufil, in his own way, at his own time. Sometimes he will do far more than he is asked, scornful of other people's ideas; has he not his own? He is full of punctiliousness, decency, order, when he feels like it; of utmost freedom, even license also, when he feels like it. Now and then he runs away, purely, I think, on the principle of: "British ponies never shall be slaves." Gentle when you would least expect it, fractious when you are most unprepared, he looks upon whizzing motor cars with calm tolerance, so unlike my own feeling that I may well cultivate his acquaintance in order to learn that wise indifference. It is as if he were disdainful of anything the modern world could invent to frighten him or get in his way; here is an ancient British self-possession, a sense of ownership in the soil. His ancestors were here hundreds of years before these trifling modernisms appeared; William the Conqueror and his Norman steeds were but parvenus and upstarts to them. He will shy at a floating feather, but I doubt if he would shy at a Zeppelin. Like many another staunch character, he takes gallantly the real troubles of life, balking only at the trifles.

"I should like to know," I said meekly, as we started, "whether it is one of my days for obeying you, or one of your days for obeying me? When I find out, I shall conduct myself accordingly." I got no answer, yet I soon discovered. There is really something uncanny about him; he seems to know more than horse or human should know; to have foreknowledge of events. I must not tell his master, or the charges will be raised from five shillings a week perhaps to eight; after all, eight shillings for supernatural wisdom would not be unreasonable! On the other hand, if it was just plain British contrariness, eight shillings would be too much, as there is such an over-supply of the commodity.

I was driving out in the forest to westward, and it is very beautiful with its great oaks and birches, and its loveliness of yellowing fern. In spite of the mellow Octoberness everywhere, I was thinking sad thoughts; all day you can drive here and yet hardly cross one man's possessions; much of the land lies idle, while people starve in England; much of it is preserved,—the poor tame pheasants are as friendly as domestic hens. The tax for charity here is one shilling four pence a pound; as I read this, I thought of London with its starving poor, its ribald poor, and I wondered if this great kingdom will vanish because the people do not pull together better. The blind selfishness of the upper class with their glass-guarded walls is a greater menace than the German siege guns.