The Worn Doorstep

by Margaret Pollock Sherwood

I was glad to see that the suffering of the past weeks had not ruined their young lives, but I admit a failure in managing my guests. Even Madge could do nothing with them, though her hand is heavy; I do not approve of corporal punishment, but life in theory and life in practice seem amazingly different at times, and I looked the other way. They demanded the tail feathers of Hengist and Horsa for their play of American Indian, and I discovered as I defeated their purpose that they thought they were living with an Indian lady and were trying to garb themselves appropriately. I rose to the challenge as best I could; have I not vowed, whatever happens, never to be an "old maid"? I romped with them in the meadow, played "tag," and helped them make boats to sail on the stream, but I had no control over them. Puck was the only perfectly successful disciplinarian, and whenever they tried to climb on his back, or ride by clinging to his tail, his quick little hind heels—fortunately only his fore feet are shod—accomplished what neither coaxing, admonition, nor enforced fasting could accomplish. They were not really bad, only dwelling in that Stone Age through which so many men-children pass. A neighbouring farmer and his wife wanted to adopt them, and I thankfully let them go, calling in the village carpenter to help Madge and me make the necessary repairs.

There was peace, we are told, for a few hours on Christmas day in the trenches; but Christmas should mean lasting peace! The attack, less than two weeks ago, on our undefended coast towns, Hartlepool, Scarborough, Whitby, has enkindled as nothing else has done the dull glow of English wrath. The recruiting goes more swiftly; a number of young men have gone from our village in the last few days; the blacksmith's shop is closed, and the forge fire is out,—he has gone to work in a munition factory. We who stay are knitting for the trenches and sewing for the hospitals; I never dreamed that I should live to know such human anguish and human want,—yet it is good to learn that one need not stand alone, bearing the pain of life in solitude. I have joined every possible relief association and have pledged almost my uttermost penny. We are even selling eggs for the hospital funds; spite of cold weather, the Matildas, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Anne, and Queen Victoria are rising magnificently to the crisis. The London people are using the house occasionally as a temporary shelter for one or two people at a time before permanent places are found for them. The Inn also serves for this, and mine hostess and I have many a conference; fortunately, in the haste and confusion, some of the bric-a-brac is getting broken; one alabaster vase and one glass case covering artificial flowers have disappeared.

Madge has amused me by finding a way to express, in rather original fashion, her deepening sympathy with humankind. A courting is going on in our kitchen; every Friday night the lovers come, she from the village, he from a farm lying beyond the Hall; and every Friday night Madge either goes to bed early, or steps out to see her friends. The girl is a country lass rather ill-treated by a mistress who shall be nameless; she has no place to receive her lover, save the stone wall of the bridge across the stream. She steals here in the dusk on her one free evening; why not? The young man is a perfectly suitable wooer, and they are safer in my kitchen than out in the cold. Yet I admit that I feel a bit guilty when I very formally return the very formal greeting of the unconscious mistress.

Just now, no one is staying with us, and there is blessed quiet. Through the silences in the little house, old moods, old laughter, old half-merry tears come back; you blend with all my days. Sometimes I feel, not as at first, that this is the end of things for me, but as if it were a little truce of God while I am waiting. To-day I found my first grey hairs; there were two, one on each temple; have you any to match them, I wonder? Ah, I keep forgetting, forgetting; keep thinking of you as still alive and suffering in this war. Remembering, I envy you; the many years ahead look formidable.

Do you remember the day we took our fifteen-mile walk from Oxford in May, and sat to rest on the flat grey stones in an old, old village churchyard, with a tangle of wild vines at our feet, and primroses and violets blossoming near,—do you remember that we talked of immortality and decided that when one died it was death, that having lived was enough? At least you did; I always had "ma doots o' ma doots." I think it was just May that made us feel that way,—the fragrances, the bird songs, the sun-flecked clouds over the Cumnor Hills; you too were far more influenced by things outside the world of pure thought than you ever knew, my philosopher; have I not seen you mistaking a sunbeam for an optimistic syllogism? We doubted, dear, but we were wrong; you do not die; you are more intensely alive than ever.

I am stealing a little time to try to do a portrait of you, though it is long since I have had a brush in my hand; you know that I was something but not much of an artist. What were the half-gifts meant for, I wonder, all the aspiration that goes into them, the denied hope? I used to suffer because I could not create the things I saw and dreamed, but that kind of suffering has vanished utterly,—life flows out in so many ways. There's a bit of attic with a north light near the Atom's lair that I have fitted up as a studio, and I have unpacked there my easel and canvases. To-day I shut myself up and began my portrait of you, merely sketching, for the outlines blurred. I had a curious experience. So clear is my inner vision of you that it blinded my eyes, and that which was in my mind a perfect picture would prove, if I left the room and came back to look at it afresh, a set of meaningless lines.

December 30. For three days I tried and tried in vain; then came sudden success, for your very mouth half smiled at me from the canvas where I had been putting random strokes. As I work, I feel that I never before really knew you; deeper understanding comes to me of your doubts, your resolutions, your long growth, and what you are. Little things long forgotten come drifting back, concerning your boyhood in the old rectory, the hard awakening of an English public school. Chance remarks that you made carelessly long ago waken in memory and reveal you to me anew. The first time I realized the depth of feeling within you was when I caught a glimpse of you listening to music at a concert in the Sheldonian theatre; once, at least, your over-guarded face betrayed the real you. I learned to know your quiet sympathy, your concealed sensitive understanding of the needs of humankind, and to comprehend your difficulty in showing it, making it available. You built up the excluding barrier of an Englishman's expression between you and the world; only animals and children dared break through. I can see them yet rubbing their fuzzy heads against you, from the big Angora at Grey friars, to little Lady Matilda at Witton Hall.

December 31. I cannot finish this portrait, for the eyes baffle me, and each time I try you seem to be looking at me appealingly, as if you wanted me to express something that I but dimly see. My present knowledge of you seems in some strange way to outstrip your remembered face. My sketch—for I shall leave it a mere sketch—suggests all your suffering and all my sorrow, and yet not all is said. What knowledge have you now that I do not share? Tell it very gently in the quiet, and I shall know; am I not always listening? I am hungry for your wisdom of death.

January 12, 1915. Deepening cold drives us all closer to the hearth; perhaps it is only in winter that one gets the full flavour of home. Don curls up by the fire with me, or takes glorious cross-country walks. The little old gingerbread woman of the lych gate has disappeared; I half suspect her of crawling temporarily into one of the graves to keep warm. In snug farmyards, by great sunny ricks of hay, the cattle of the countryside shelter themselves contentedly. Now, even more than in summer, this land seems home from end to end; in every nook and corner is something of the appeal of the fireside; no other country so suggests from shore to shore one great threshold and hearth. Its churchyards, with their dead softly tucked in, the comforting grass above; its low-roofed villages; its individual homes in their great loveliness wear one expression.

There are wonderful sunsets over the brown earth or white snow. This is that England on whose domain the sun never sets, yet it sets most exquisitely day by day, did they but know.