How we laughed as you practised riding! Lord Hamlet on a motorcycle, with no time for thought, no time for scruple! How we searched out rough bits of road and watched you try to cross a newly-mown meadow, where late poppies, I remember, were blossoming in the stubble. Once you struck a stone and fell, and your mother amazed you by crying out. I laughed and horrified her; but I kissed its handles before you went. The motorcycle had been to me the most hateful of modern inventions, inexcusable, unmentionable. And here it became a symbol of dauntless courage and highest service; beyond the bravery necessary for a charge in battle is the bravery needed here; this evil, roaring, puffing thing might turn into the chariot that would carry you over the borders of the sun.
That one brief hour that we found to steal away to Bagley wood lingers yet. The anemones were gone, but all about was the soft midsummer murmur, and the ripe fulness of August life. What practical things we talked about! I think that we sent you out fitted up as well as any German soldier of them all. Who, in the Kaiser's army, had a more complete or smaller sewing kit? Who had thread wound off on very diminutive bits of cardboard to save the space that spools would take,—white linen and black linen and khaki coloured, all very strong? What Teuton could challenge you on the score of buttons? It was good, it was very good, in your mother to let me help.
You thought I never wavered; when you were doubting, I was sure; when you were sure,—you never knew that I wrote you a note that last night and took back my decision, saying that thinkers had their own separate task, and that you should stay. I burned it…. I would not have you back, dear, if it meant giving up that inmost you I knew in those glorified few days. You have fulfilled yourself.
September 15. Who is going to keep house for me—that is the problem? Somebody there must be to cook and clean and polish; a staff composed of one British female is what I need, for I can do many, very many things myself.
Mine host and my landlady took counsel; I let them do a great deal of thinking for me, for their minds are rusty from disuse; you can actually hear a kind of creaking when they try to make them go. They finally decided that I was to drive in a pony cart to a village off to eastward, to consult Madge and Peter Snell, man and wife, both from a different part of the country, lately employed at the Hall as under-cook and gardener, now out of work because the Hall is closed. I readily agreed; yes, I was used to driving, and the directions—first turn at the left, then a bit of road and a turn at the right, 'm, and then a long stretch across a dike to a stone bridge and a stream and a village spire—seemed clear enough.
But when my equipage is drawn up at the Inn door, whom do I see but my wayward friend of the meadow, harnessed to an absurd little basket-cart as diminutive as he. I am delighted to see him; is the pleasure mutual? He gives me one look out of his eyes that seems to say he will be even with me yet; Don leaps to a place of honour in the cart, and we go flying down the village street with sparks flashing from the iron-shod little hoofs. Drive? Yes, I am accustomed to driving horses, but not Pucks, not changelings; I never, never drove a mischievous kitten fastened to a baby carriage! And that little "trap" was a trap indeed! What breed my pony is, as mortals reckon things, I do not know; he is too big for a Shetland, too little for a horse; perhaps he is an Exmoor pony, or the product of some northern heath. We go gaily to the left, somewhat perilously near a corner at the right, and we are out racing over a long dike built across what was once a low-lying sea-meadow. Don looks up at me with vast enjoyment in his eyes, and that little quiver of the face that means a fox-terrier smile.
About half-way across we come to a gate; there is nothing to do but for me to get out to open it, and this I do. Swift as a flash, my Puck whirls about and goes dashing for home; holding tightly to the reins, I run also, laughing as I have not laughed for days. Don, with his paws on the edge of the cart, barks furiously. Pulling and dragging with all my might, at length I stop the pony. The little wretch looks at me almost respectfully as I turn him about, and he trots meekly back; he was only trying me out, to see of what stuff I was made. He stood as firmly as the Tower of London as I shut the gate and climbed into the cart. Then came the stream and the stone bridge and the village spire; and a row of small garden plots with yellow, late summer things blossoming in them, and Madge and Peter standing by a garden gate.
I knew at first glance that they must both come; now that I think of it, I have quite a garden, though it will seem little to one who has worked at the 'All; there are always heavy things to be done about the kitchen, and Peter knows more than he will admit about the drudgery necessary to sustain human life. Peter, it seems, has been a soldier, has served in the South African war, and is a time-expired man who has beaten his sword into a ploughshare,—or is it a pruning hook? But none of his accomplishments is my real reason; the half-belligerent affection on the face of husband and wife shows me that they should not be separated.
Madge, the look of anxiety already lifting from her smooth and comely face,—one sees that look here in many of the unemployed,—looks questioningly at Peter when I extend my invitation. I assure him that I need a man to look after the garden and the pony; at this Puck pricks up his ears and gives me a half glance. Yes, I have decided to have him, if I may, for my very own. There is a remote something in Peter's gait and bearing that suggests the soldier, but it is the soldier whose long leisure re-acts against the discipline.
"But perhaps you were thinking of going to the war?" I ask.