This also has its bodyguard of oaks and poplars on the one side, and on the other the high hedge dividing it from the lane, over which tilt the red roofs of the cottages.
Within the enclosure a family of giant docks spread themselves in the long grass, and ancient fruit trees sprawl on their hands and knees, each with a rose tree climbing over its ungainliness, making a low inner barrier between the tall trees, and the little low-lying burnished garden in the midst. Here ranged and grouped colonies of rejoicing plants follow each other into flower in an ordered sequence, all understood and cherished by the earth-ingrained hands of the Home Ruler.
Some few disappointments there are, but many successes. Wire worm may get in. Cuttings may “damp off.” Brompton stocks may not always “go through the winter.” But the flowers respond in that blessed little place. They do their best, for the best has been done for them. If it is essential to their well being that their feet should be shaded from the sun, their feet are shaded, by some well-bred low growing plant in front of them, which does not interfere with them. If they need the morning sun they are placed where its rays can pour upon them.
It is a garden of vivid noonday sunshine, when we sit and bask among the rock pinks on the central bit of brickwork; and of long velvet afternoon shadows: a garden of quiet conversation, and peaceful intercourse, and of endless, endless loving labour in sun and rain.
I contribute the quiet conversation, and the Home Ruler contributes the loving labour; and, while we thus each do our share, the manifold voices of the village reach us through the tall hedge: the cries of the children playing by the bridge, the thin complaint of the goats, the jingle of harness, and the thud of ponderous slow stepping hoofs, the whistle of the lad sitting sideways on the leading horse; all the paisible rumeur of the pleasant communal life of which we are a part.
Our village is not really called Riff. It has a beautiful and ancient name, which I shall not disclose, but I don’t mind telling you that it is close to Mouse Hold,[1] a hamlet in the boggy meadows beyond the Deben; and not so very far from Gobblecock Hall. Of course if you are not Suffolk born and bred you will think I am trying to be humourous and that I have invented this interesting old English name. I can only say. Look in any good map of Suffolk. You will find Gobblecock Hall on it near the coast. Riff is only a few miles from Kesgrave Church, where you can still see the tombstone of the gipsy queen in the churchyard. The father of one of the oldest inhabitants of Riff witnessed the immense concourse of gipsies who attended the funeral.
Riff is within an easy walk of Boulge, where Fitzgerald lies under his little Persian rose tree, covered in summer with tiny yellow roses. You see how central Riff is. And, if you cross the Deben, and walk steadily up the low hill to that broomy, gorsy, breezy upland, Bromswell Heath, then you stand on the very spot where, a little over a hundred years ago, British troops were encamped to await Napoleon. And a few years ago our soldiers assembled there once more to resist the invasion which Kitchener at any rate expected, and which it now seems evident Germany intended.
We in Riff learned the meaning of war early in the day. Which of us will forget the first Zeppelin raid, and later on the sight of torn, desolated Woodbridge the day after it was bombed: the terrified blanched faces peeping out from the burst doorways, the broken smoking buildings, the high piles of shredded matchwood that had been houses yesterday, the blank incredulous faces of friends and neighbours. No doubt our faces were as incredulous as those we saw around us. It seemed as if it could not, could not be! We had seen photographs of similar havoc in Belgium and France, but Woodbridge! our own Woodbridge, that pleasant shopping town on its tidal river with the wild swans on it. It could not be! But so it was.