This charming chronicle has no plot.

It is an attempt to present a happy, witty simple-minded woman who attracted love because she gave it out, and tried to make her home a little well of happiness in the desert of the world. After all most people live their lives without its incidents forming in any sense a "plot." However, to tell this sort of story is difficult; the attention of the reader must be aroused and held by the sheer merit of the writing, and the publishers believe they have found in Catherine Cotton a writer with just the right gifts of wit, sympathy, and understanding.

EXPERIENCE

by

CATHERINE COTTON

LONDON 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO LTD
GLASGOW SYDNEY AUCKLAND

Copyright

First Impression, June, 1922
Second Impression, November, 1922
Third Impression, January, 1923
Fourth Impression, September, 1923
Fifth Impression, March, 1925
Sixth Impression, April, 1926
Seventh Impression, October, 1927
Eighth Impression, February, 1928
Ninth Impression, October, 1928
Tenth Impression, July, 1929

Printed in Great Britain

TO
ARTHUR, CHARLIE, ROSS, ALEC, AND BOB
(Five very gallant gentlemen who gave their lives
for England)

PREFACE

It has been said that 'Novelists are the Showmen of life.' Perhaps because the world has passed through a time of special stress and strain it has come about that the modern novel is largely concerned with the complexities of life and is very often an unhappy and a tiring thing to read.

Yet humour, happiness, and love exist and are just as real as gloom, so need the 'realism' of a book be called in question because it pictures pleasant scenes?

For there are still some joyous souls who smile their way through life because they take its experience with a simplicity that is rarer than it used to be.

This, then, is the story of a woman whose outlook was a happy one; whose mind was never rent by any great temptations, and who, because she was NOT 'misunderstood in early youth,' never struggled for 'self-expression,' but only to express herself (in as many words as possible!) to the great amusement and uplifting of her family!

For these reasons this book, like that of the immortal Mr Jorrocks, 'does not aspire to the dignity of a novel,' but is just a story—an April mixture of sun and shadow—as most lives are; a book to read when you're tired, perhaps, since it tells of love and a home and garden and such like restful things. And if it makes you smile and sigh at times, well, maybe, that is because life brings to many of us, especially to the women folk, very much the same 'experience.'

C. C.

PART I

'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child....'

CHAPTER I

Aunt Constance was away, but, as it was my birthday, I invited myself to lunch with Uncle Jasper. Father and Ross came too. In the middle of lunch my uncle looked at me over the top of his glasses and said,—

'Well, Meg, so you are seventeen and have left school. What are you going to do now?'

An idea that had been simmering in my mind for some days suddenly came on top,—

'I'm going to write a book.'

Ross stared at me, aghast. 'Jerubbesheth!' he exclaimed, 'when you could hunt three days a week, walk a puppy, and do the things that really matter. What fools girls are!'

'Have you sufficient knowledge of any one subject to write a book about it?' Uncle Jasper inquired.

'Oh, my angel,' I exclaimed, 'I don't refer to the stuff you and father produce. I'm not going to write a treatise on architecture, or Dante, or the Cumulative Evidences of the Cherubim. I mean fiction—a story—a novel.'

'But even so,' persisted my uncle, 'you can't write about things of which you know nothing!'

'But you don't have to know about things when you write fiction. You make it up as you go along, don't you see?'

'You only want a hero and a heroine and a plot,' my brother giggled.

'And a strong love interest,' said father, and he twinkled at me; 'even Dante——'

'Oh, daddy, must you bring in Dante?' I said. 'He was such a terrible old bore and he didn't even marry the girl.'

Uncle Jasper gazed at me as if I were a tame gorilla or a missing link, or something that looked as if it ought to have brains but somehow hadn't. 'Dear me!' he said. 'Well, go on, Meg, but if you merely make up your story as you go along you will get your background dim and confused and your characterisation weak.'

'I can't think what you mean,' I groaned.

'Why, Meg, if you lay your plot in the fourteenth century, for instance, your characters must be clear cut, mediæval, and tone with the background, don't you see? It would require a great deal of research to get the atmosphere of your century right.'

'But I shan't write about the fourteenth century,' I said in slow exasperation. 'My book will be about the present time. I shall write of the things I know.'

'Well, but what do you know, little 'un? That's what we are trying to get at,' said daddy, with his appalling habit of bringing things suddenly to a head.

'It's rather difficult to say offhand, father, but I know something of the fauna of the South Pole, and about Influenza (I've had it four times), and a lot about ski-ing——'

'If you could see yourself ski-ing you wouldn't say so,' said my brother with his usual candour, 'your methods are those of a Lilienfeldian wart-hog, and as for your Telemarks—ye gods!'

I ignored my brother and continued: 'My knowledge of flowers is extensive, and I know two bits of history and——'

'Could we have the two bits now without waiting for the novel?'

'Oh, certainly, Uncle Jasper.' (I always like to oblige my family when I can). 'The first is the one that everybody remembers: William I., 1066, married Matilda of Flanders, but I have had an expensive education, as daddy often says, so I know, too, that William II., 1087, never married.'

'Dear me,' said my uncle, again with his indulgent-to-the-tame-gorilla look.

Daddy laughed and got up. 'Well, I should think it would be a most interesting book, though how you will work in the two bits of history with the fauna of the South Pole, influenza, and ski-ing passes the comprehension of a mere male thing!'

Then he kissed me for some extraordinary reason and said that he expected I should get to know some other things as I went along, and Uncle Jasper blew his nose violently, and Ross observed that I was a funny little ass. After that we went home.

Father had a choir practice or something after dinner, and Ross said he had to see a man about a dog (he can't possibly want another), so I retired to my own special domain to start my novel.

I was rummaging in my handkerchief box for a pencil when Nannie came in with a ream of sermon paper and a quart bottle of ink, followed by a procession of servants bearing the New English Dictionary as far as the letter T, which Daddy thought might be useful. In the course of the next hour Ross sent up a wet towel and a can marked 'Midnight Oil,' and a note arrived from Uncle Jasper to say that he had omitted to mention that it was better 'to resolutely avoid' split infinitives (whatever they are), and that if I felt bound at times to write of things I didn't know, it was quite a good tip to shove in a quotation from the best authority on the subject, and that his library was at my disposal at any time. He said, too, that he had a spare copy of the Record Interpreter, if it would be of any use.

My uncle's jokes are like that; no ordinary person can see them at all.

But two can play at 'pulling legs,' so I sewed up the legs of my brother's pyjamas, put the wet towel and the can of oil in his bed, and the dictionary in father's, and, having poured the quart of ink in their two water-jugs, I sat down with great contentment to fulfil my life's ambition.

I thought over the subjects on which my knowledge was irrefutable, but a novel inspired by any one of them seemed impossible, and by 10.30 p.m. I was suffering from bad brain fag. Then Nannie came in to brush my hair, so I confided my troubles to her, as I always do.

'I seem to be a most ignorant person, Nannie; the only thing I really know about is the family.'

'Well, write a book about that, dearie, I'm sure it's mad enough.'

'But then there wouldn't be a plot.'

'No more there is in most people's lives, not the women's, anyway.'

'Has your life been very dull, darling?' I asked.

'My life,' said Nannie solemnly, 'has been one large hole with bits of stocking round that I have had to try and draw together.'

When Ross came up his remarks about his bed were of so sulphurous a character that I swear I could almost see the brimstone blowing under my door. And in the silent watches of the night I decided that my book shall be about the family, from the time it was born to the day it was buried. Surely something in the nature of a plot will turn up in between.

CHAPTER II

To begin at the beginning. When I was waiting to be born I must have run up to God and said,—

'Please, could this little boy come, too?'

And perhaps He laughed and answered,—

'Oh, certainly, Miss Fotheringham, as you make such a point of it,' for Ross and I are twins, and we have lived all our life in this little Devonshire village that is tucked into a hollow in the hills. Daddy is the parson here and Uncle Jasper the lord of the manor. But this place is not 'clear cut,' as Uncle Jasper says my 'background' ought to be. It is just a soft jumble of ferns and flowers, of misty mornings and high hedges, of sunshine, of shadows and sweet scents, of hills and dales, of all the countless things that go to make the village so lovely and so baffling.

I think Devonshire is like a beautiful but elusive woman. You think you know her very well, you walk about her lanes and woods, but when you think to capture her soul she ripples away from you in one of her little rushing torrents, just as a woman escapes from the lover who thought he had almost caught and kissed her!

This old-world Vicarage stands in a large and fragrant garden opposite the entrance to the park. If you walk through the great gates and up the long avenue you come to the Elizabethan manor house where my aunt and uncle live with their son, Eustace, and all the family retainers.

Oh! and they are a priceless couple. He isn't interested in anything 'later' than the Middle Ages, she in nothing 'earlier' than Heaven. But their lives are most harmonious, and together they 'wallow in old churches,' he absorbed in aumbries and piscinas, she in the prayer and praise part. Then, perhaps, he'll call her,—

'Constance, look at this floating cusp!'

She admires his treasure, her eyes limpid and sweet with saints and angels, and thinks, 'Why, if I stopped praising the very stones here would cry out,' and so they both take a deep interest in the moulding for quite different reasons.

It's the same with meals. He's always late—she's always patient. She doesn't try to be, she is. He'll come in half an hour after the time for luncheon. 'Constance, I'm so sorry, I'm afraid I'm late, I hope you haven't waited. I found such a fascinating bit of Norman work in that church.' She knows he doesn't mean to be discourteous, but that he's got simply no idea of time, while she is always thinking of eternity, so she says gently, 'It doesn't matter, Jasper, if you hurry now, dear. I always prefer to wait.'

She is such a stately beauty, such a very great lady. She makes all the other women feel their gloves are shabby. Her white hair shines so that I always think it's 'glistering,' and her nose is quite straight, the kind you see in a cathedral on a stone archbishop, and her clothes are 'scrummy,' so really beautiful that you hardly realise them. They are part of her, and she harmonises with the background. Her tweeds are just the heather she walks about in, and at night it's only her lovely old lace that shows you where her neck leaves off and her shimmering cream satin gown begins.

Uncle Jasper worships the ground she walks on, while for her, 'Jasper' comes just after God.

But although my uncle thinks her so adorable, he can't keep even his compliments quite free of his ruling passion.

'Constance,' he said one day, 'you are beautiful, why, you've got mediæval ears!'

And 'Constance' blushed at that because, coming from him, it was a most tremendous compliment, and she was secretly rather glad, I expect, that when ears were doled round she got a pair with the lobes left out. Funny old Uncle Jasper!

But though—

'For him delicious flavours dwell

In Books, as in old muscatel,'

he's quite a decent landlord. There are no leaky roofs on his estate. Daddy says it's because of his feudal mind. I don't know if that is why the whole village seems like a family. We are interested in all the cottage folk, and they in us, just as our fathers were before us. Uncle Jasper looks after their material interests and Daddy saves their souls; Ross bosses all the boys, and I cuddle the babies, while Aunt Constance is like that lady in E. B. Browning's poem, whose goodness was that nice, invisible sort. She too

'Never found fault with you, never implied

Your wrong by her right, and yet men at her side

Grew nobler, girls purer, as through the whole town

The children were gladder that pulled at her gown.'

Father is an Evangelical, but my Aunt Constance is what the village people call a little 'high' in her religion. She would like flowers and candles, too, in church, if daddy would have them, which he won't, and she keeps the fast days, but unostentatiously. Yet she and father live in harmony and love, and only laugh a little at each other!

But my cousin Eustace annoys me. He is so good and holy. He is short and thin and pale and vacillating, and wears overcoats and carries an umbrella. In fact, he is everything that his mother and father aren't. Ross doesn't get on with him, and finds him 'tiring.' Daddy says he is a throwback. I asked Eustace once if one of his ancestors could possibly have been a nun as he is so like a monk himself. He said I was simply abominable and wouldn't speak to me all day. In the evening he said he was sorry, as quite obviously I didn't know what I was talking about. Naturally I wouldn't speak to him then. Such a way to apologise!

Nannie was our old nurse, but since mother died she has been housekeeper. She is a comfortable kind of person. Any one who is tired, or cold, or hurt, or hungry, or very small is always Nannie's 'lamb,' though how the radiant six-foot-one and still-growing Ross can come under that category I don't know, unless it's because he's always hungry. But he has ever been, and is, and will remain, her 'lamb.'

Father is Uncle Jasper's brother and not an easy person to explain. He is a handsome, great tall thing, and a mixture of Dante and horses, dogs, humility, sport, and autocracy, but he is most adorable and has a divine sense of humour. Aunt Constance says he is a mystic, but I don't know what she means. I have never been able to understand how he came to be a parson at all, for every inch of him is soldier. He has got a temper, too, only he doesn't lose it when most people lose theirs. He's dreadfully difficult about some things. He is so fastidious about clothes, especially mine. I think his eyes must magnify like a shaving-glass. He sees holes which are perfectly invisible to me. There is in me a certain carelessness about the things that show (I must be perfect underneath), but a button off my shoe doesn't really worry me unless the shoe comes off. A jag in my tweeds leaves me cold, and the moral aspect of a hole in my glove doesn't weigh with me at all. Besides, as I said to father one day when I was being rowed,—

'If I have a hole in my skirt it would appear as if I had just torn it, but if I have a darn it would look like premeditated poverty.'

My brother Ross is going into the army. He's awfully like father if you leave out Dante and the humility part and shove in a perpetual bullying of his sister. But he's not a mystic. Oh, dear, no! He loves this world with all its pomps and horses, adores its vanities, its coloured socks and handkerchiefs and ties. He is a radiant person with a great capacity for friendship. He is nice to every one until a chap spills things down his clothes, and then my brother slowly freezes and curls up and is 'done with him.'

He and I do not always dwell together in harmony and love. We 'fight' most horribly at times, but I adore him really, though I wouldn't let him know it. It would be frightfully bad for him. I run my male things on the truest form of kindness lines. They always loathe it.

And mother? Oh, I can't write about her at all, even though it's so long since she died; she was half Irish and so pretty and so gay. She fell off a step ladder one day when she was gathering roses, and Ross found her unconscious, and that night she died. I couldn't understand why a broken arm should kill her till daddy explained that the hope of another little son went with her, too. Father's eyes have never looked the same since; there is still a hurt look in them.

Then there's Sam. He is not a relative, but always seems like one; he is the jolly boy who lives at Uncle Jasper's lodge and is Ross's greatest friend and most devoted slave. Why, when Ross first went to Harrow Sam ran away from home and turned up as the school boot-boy (and got an awful licking from my brother for his pains), and now as Ross is at Sandhurst he has got taken on there, too. He will do anything to be within a hundred miles of Ross. I come in for a share of his devotion because I am his idol's sister. What that boy doesn't know about fishing, birds' eggs, and the Hickley woods isn't worth knowing. But Sam has been known to turn and rend Ross for his good (I love to see him doing it), just as Brown, Sam's father, who is head gardener at the Manor House, turns and rends Uncle Jasper once every ten years or so, when his ideas have become too archaic to be borne by any man who wants to make some alterations to improve the gardens.

CHAPTER III

We have a family skeleton. It is my Aunt Amelia. She isn't illegitimate or anything like that. This book is quite respectable. Nor is she thin. She has a high stomach and is as proud as it is high. She always wears black broché dresses, even the first thing in the morning. Nannie says they are most beautiful quality and would stand alone. She adorns herself with cameo brooches and rings with hair inside, and she wears square-toed boots and stuff gloves that pull on without buttons. Daddy says all Evangelicals do, except his daughter.

She has been a widow for many years. Indeed she only lived with her husband six months from her virginity, and then he died of the 'Ammonia,' as the village children call it. My aunt never goes out without her maid, Keziah, and she carries a disgusting 'fydo' everywhere. She talks religion all day long, and quotes texts at people. She brings out my prickles.

Father says that no one will know what a 'fydo' is, and that I am not to be disrespectful, because she is a really good woman and has the missionary spirit. Father is like that, he has a kind of humility that won't let him say beastly things about any one. My brother is not so particular. He used to say that he wouldn't let the chaps at school know he had an aunt who talked about his soul like a little Bethel for anything this world could offer him. Besides, I should have thought that any one would know that a 'fydo' is any bloated dog of uncertain ancestry that stinks and pants.

Our only other relative is daddy's cousin Emily. She lives in Hampstead, next door but five to Aunt Amelia. Her parrot can say the collect for the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity.

Cousin Emily is a spinster, but she has a grand passion in her life, and it is animals. She will have nothing killed, with the result that her house is overrun with mice and the garden's full of snails. She visits the poor in the East End and gives away flannel petticoats at Christmas large enough to fit the dome of St Paul's. The last time father stayed there she caught a flea in the slums, but of course she couldn't destroy it. She was greatly agitated and went about the house with the wretched creature clasped in her arms, as it were, waiting for an inspiration as to what to do with it. Finally she decided to put it on the cat's back, and was quite happy till father wickedly said he did not think that arrangement was fair on the cat.

Then she wished she had thrown it down the cellar stairs, but daddy teased her and said, 'the poor thing might have broken its leg and lain amid the wine bottles in anguish, unable even to help itself to brandy or anything.' The poor old dear thereupon said, 'But, dear cousin, what shall I do if I find another?' and her dear cousin advised her strongly to let the house furnished.

But I like her awfully. So does Ross. He says she is a ripping old bird. She gives us topping presents. She sent me two of the darlingest white and fawn rabbits, exactly alike, when I was a kiddie. One was called 'Nada the Lily' and the other 'dear Buckiebuckie,' but I found the mental strain of life too great when I found ten little rabbits in dear Buckiebuckie's cage. He seemed so pleased with them, too; that's what worried me so. He didn't seem to know how wrong it was, and neither did Nada the Lily, for she sat in placid indifference by her empty nest box.

Aunt Amelia was staying with us at the time, so I asked her about it, but she said it was not a nice thing for any little girl to talk about, especially a clergyman's daughter. I shed tears then and ran out in the woods, but Nannie followed me,—

'Oh, what an old fool the woman is; how much longer is she going to stay? Don't you worry, dearie, 'tisn't the first time that a buck and doe's got mixed, and won't be the last neither. I expect you got 'em muddled when you cleaned them out.'

Thus Nannie brought a situation, electric with insuperable difficulties, down to the level of homely everydayness, where I felt I could cope with it. She is always like that. I changed dear Buckiebuckie's name then to 'Adam and Eve,' because he was the mother of all living and he'd 'ad em! Somehow, when we were children there always seemed to be trouble when Aunt Amelia was in the house. We always said dreadful things in front of her, or else the things we usually said were noticed more.

The very first time she came to stay, when we were six years old, there were two ructions in as many minutes.

We had a hen at that time called 'The Old Maid,' because she was of uncertain age and used to peck the others, and as she hadn't earned her board and keep we had her boiled for luncheon. It was some one's birthday and we kids were allowed to lunch downstairs. Father carved and in great disgust said,—

'Whatever bird is this?'

'"The Old Maid," daddy,' said Ross.

'Well, it doesn't seem to have much breast.'

'But then,' as my small brother remarked, 'you wouldn't expect an old maid to have much, would you?'

I made the next faux pas, but it was kindly meant. Aunt Amelia grumbled that she had been quite chilly in the night and hadn't been able to sleep, so I said,—

'Mother, couldn't we search the parish for a young virgin for Aunt Amelia like King David had when he was old and gat no heat?'

Father exploded into his tumbler. But Aunt Amelia said she had hoped that I would grow up a good, pure woman like my grandmother. Daddy lost his temper then and said he profoundly hoped his daughter wouldn't grow up 'a good, pure woman' if it meant that——'

'Anthony!' said mother.

And father said 'Sorry, Biddy,' and asked Aunt Amelia if she'd have some more bread sauce.

(Mother and daddy always called hot water bottles 'Young Virgins' after that!)

After lunch we all went down to the lake, and going through the woods I said something was 'infernal,' and there was a horrid silence. Daddy is like that, he so seldom says anything. It's what he doesn't say that's so beastly if he's displeased with one, so I said, 'Mustn't I, daddy?' and he replied, 'I think you know quite well, darling.'

'But,' I expostulated, 'surely one might sometimes.' I looked round that wood. 'Why, daddy, I might say we were in fernal regions now, look at them all up that bank.'

Daddy looked amused and his eyes all curled up at the corners,—

'Well, darling, perhaps you're right, but you must always think of Devonshire if you do.'

Aunt Amelia said she didn't know what his dear, dead mother would say, after the Christian upbringing he had had, too. Daddy seemed inclined to lose his temper again and remarked that a certain kind of Christian upbringing was only another name for spiritual slavery. Aunt Amelia threw up her hands and said 'Shocking.' Then father whispered to mother that if Aunt Amelia didn't return to Hampstead soon he'd have to go into lodgings! He always says that if he's worried.

General conversation is apt to languish in Aunt Amelia's presence and to come back like a boomerang to some exhausting topic that most people never discuss. She understands father better now and thinks he's 'one of the right sort' because he happens to be an Evangelical, but she says he is 'dangerously charitable,' and always tries to find out if he's really sound on the subject of candles.

I remember once daddy, gently teasing, said,—

'But, dear Amelia, I thought it was your friends Ridley and Latimer who lighted a candle in England which should never be put out. If I were asked to celebrate at a church where they had lights what do you think I ought to do?'

And Amelia answered, 'I should hope you'd blow 'em out.' Then daddy said,—

'What a pearl you are, Amelia!' and laughed and kissed the stern old Calvinist. Somehow daddy could live with an Anabaptist or the Pope, and both would say, 'He's one of the right sort,' even though they'd disagreed with every single thing he'd said. Darling daddy!

CHAPTER IV

Well, I have got in the 'background' now, and the dramatis personæ too, but do they 'tone' with one another and how can I make them when they are all different? Is my Aunt Amelia in the least like Devonshire? Does her fydo remind one of its sweet scents? How can I reconcile my prehistoric uncle with the twentieth century?

I went to the Manor House to-day to consult him as to the 'atmosphere' of the century. Perhaps I can at any rate get that right. He wasn't particularly illuminating. I don't think clever people ever are. The more they know the less they can impart. There was a woman at school who tried to teach me German. She had heaps of letters after her name like Uncle Jasper has. She said the verb must go at the end, but she never could make me understand which part of the verb. I got so desperate at last that I used to say, 'gehabt gehaben geworden sein' at the end of every sentence and let her take her choice. That's partly why I left school when I did. The head mistress seemed to think parental control was what I needed.

So I said to Uncle Jasper, 'What would you say was the atmosphere of this century?'

'You have raised a point of particular perspicacity, Meg,' he replied. 'The atmosphere of this century is becoming increasingly materialistic, as is manifested in its deplorable lack of spirituality and intellectual originality. The universal diminution of intelligent ratiocination, the vacuous verbosity of a vacillating press; the decadent and open opportunism of our public men, the upward movement of the proletariat, inspired by the renegade and socialistic vampires that suck the national blood—all these are symptomatic of the recrudescence of materialism.'

He stopped to breathe here, and I felt I must say gehabt gehaben geworden sein. He doesn't always talk like that. Sometimes I think he does it to aggravate me, but I know anything modern upsets him. I offered to go with him to look at the Saxon work in the church, as it usually has a calming influence on him, but he said he was better and he hoped he had made himself clear!

When I got home I asked Nannie.

'The atmosphere of this century, dearie,' she said. 'Oh, the same as it's always been, I should think—three white frosts and a wet day, or three fine days and a thunderstorm.'

I observed that she had made a remark of particular perspicacity, and she asked me if I felt feverish. It is trying when I am trying to increase my vocabulary. Still, on the whole she was helpful, for she said why didn't I do what I said I was going to and write of the things I know about. 'Tell about the Hickley woods and how you fell in the water, dearie.'

'But will the general public like that, Nannie?'

'I should think they'd prefer it to the stuff your uncle writes.'

I feel that she's right. I must take a firm stand with my relatives. I cannot be blown about by every breath of their doctrine. Besides, my family's views differ. Uncle Jasper says,—

'The general public is at its best in Oxford and Canterbury.'

'At Epsom or Ascot,' my brother asserts.

'Hunting,' says daddy.

'At early celebration on Easter Day,' says Aunt Constance, with eyes like a Murillo Madonna.

But I like the general public, always, everywhere. It sort of twinkles at one, so I shall tell about the Hickley woods and hope that it will like them just as much as I do.

Oh, if only I could get the splendour of the woods down on my paper—the flaming beeches in the autumn, the fairyland of hoar frost later on, the gradual waking of the trees and birds and flowers in the spring, the scent of clover, and the sheets of daffodills, the mist of bluebells and the clouds of lilies. I know where the earliest primroses blow and the hedge where the birds build first. I could show you where to find the biggest blackberries and the bit of bog covered with the kingcups and milkmaids. There are ant hills, too, and a wasps' nest in a hollow tree. The little paths and lanes are carpeted with moss and the undergrowth is sweet with honeysuckle. The woods are always lovely, but in the evening they grow 'tulgy,' and the trees take fantastic shapes and the mossy lanes seem hushed and filled with mystery. When I was little I used to be glad then that the boys were with me, though I wouldn't have admitted a creepy feeling down my spine to any one but father. The beautiful Hickley woods!

They have a strange effect upon me. They seem to 'wash' my mind. I never found it easy to be obedient, my bit of Irish blood always making me 'agin the government.' I've got claws inside me, and feathers underneath my skin that get ruffled when I'm crossed. So when I was little and rebellious I always ran out of the house and across the garden into the woods. And sometimes Ross would come flying after me with comfort and advice.

'Why do you always run out in the woods Meg, when you're naughty?'

''Cos they wash me.'

'Oh, you are funny, darling,' and then with a little air of protection that is always associated in my mind with Ross and sticks of chocolate, he would give me one and say,—

'But you were raver naughty, you know; I think you'd better come in now and be sorry.'

So when the woods had 'washed' me sufficiently I would go in and say I was dutiful now if father pleased. But once when I was five and some reproof of daddy's had cut me to the heart, I added,—

'But my quick still hurts me. It's all bluggy.'

I seem to have lived the best part of my life out in the woods. In them we played our games and had our endless picnics. In them I had the great adventure which caused me to become a doormat and let my brother trample on me all his life.

When Ross and I were twelve we went out very early to spend a long day in the woods with Sam and all the dogs. We made for the lake. It was always the first item on our programme to dump the lunch and tea in a special hidyhole. While the boys were busy I decided that the one and only thing I wanted to do was to climb out and sit on the branch of a tree that overhung the water. I got halfway across it when Ross shouted to me angrily to come back, and Sam said the branch was rotten.

'I'm going to the end,' I said, 'it isn't rotten.'

'Will you come back, Meg?'

'No, I won't,' I cried, my Irish grandmother at once 'agin the government.' I just loved that crawl across that tree, because the boys were simply furious and could do nothing. It was no use coming after me if the branch were rotten, it would only have made things worse. When I got to the end I said elegantly, 'Yah, I told you it wasn't,' and as I said it the beastly thing snapped and I went into the lake with a splash. I could swim all right but hadn't had any practice with my clothes on. Sam and Ross were in after me like a flash and got me back to land, and we stood three dripping objects, two in a perfect fury with the third. Then, as my luck was dead out, we heard the horses, and there were mother and daddy, Uncle Jasper and Aunt Constance out for a morning ride. Uncle Jasper was suddenly jerked back out of the Middle Ages: Aunt Constance tumbled out of heaven, mother looked frightfully worried, and daddy lost his temper, and said it was simply abominable that two big boys of their age couldn't look after a little girl of mine. But how he reconciled that remark with his Christian conscience I don't know, seeing there was only six months difference between the eldest and the youngest—but those boys would always grow so.

Daddy ordered them to go home at once, and when they had got into dry things to wait in his dressing-room till he had leisure to give them the biggest thrashing they'd ever had yet.

Then mother wrung out my clothes, and Uncle Jasper remarked that the children who lived before the Reformation never behaved so badly; Aunt Constance had got to that bit of the General Thanksgiving where you bless Him for preservation, especially of nieces and nephews and boys who live at lodges; Ross and Sam were just turning to go home when I—honestly it was the first minute I could speak, I had swallowed such a lot of water—exclaimed,—

'Father, how dare you be so wickedly unjust?'

Every one looked at me as I hurled that bombshell. People didn't usually speak so to father—least of all his children, but daddy never gets angry at the things you'd think he would, and all he said was,—

'What do you mean, little 'un?'

'Why, father, they told me not to go.'

'It was my fault, sir; I ought to have seen she didn't,' Ross interrupted.

'I don't suppose she heard me say the branch was rotten, sir,' said Sam.

But I exclaimed,—

'Oh, daddy, they are telling frightful lies; I did hear Sam say that it was rotten, and Ross told me not to go.'

So father said, 'Sorry, old chaps,' to Ross and Sam, and they said, 'It was quite all right, sir.' So father said, 'Well, run her home, boys, so that she doesn't catch cold,' and mother called after us, 'Give her some hot milk.'

So Ross and Sam ran me home and said I was a jolly decent kid, which was drivel. And after Nannie had got me dry, I went and waited in father's dressing-room. As he and mother came upstairs I heard daddy say,—

'Well, I suppose I must get into a dog collar as I've got this beastly clerical meeting.'

And mother laughed,—

'I don't think the collar makes much difference when the rest of you smells so of dogs and stables.' And then she added in her delicious Irish brogue, 'I know it isn't seemly to ask a parson to leave the Word of God and serve tables, but do you know a savoury that would do for to-night?'

And daddy said,—

'I've just seen a beauty in the woods.'

'What do you mean, Anthony,' laughed mother. And father replied,—

'An angel on horseback, darling,' and told her not to blush. He came in then, and saw me, and said,—

'Hallo, little 'un, what are you doing here?'

'I thought I had to come, father, as I did it.'

'Oh—ah, yes, of course—I've got to give you the biggest thrashing you've ever had in your life, haven't I?' And he sat down and pulled me on his knee.

'Why did you do it, Meg? No, don't say it was your Irish grandmother' (taking the very words out of my mouth) 'it was pure, unadulterated devil, and mother doesn't feel that she can ever let you go out in the woods again, and I don't think the boys will take the responsibility of you any more, either.'

'Father!' I exclaimed, going cold all over.

'Well, you see, darling, it isn't the first time is it? There was that wasps' nest, for instance. You know those boys do understand that sort of thing. And unless you promise in future you will do exactly what they tell you, I won't let you go, but shall keep you chained up in my dressing-room. I really can't let my only daughter drown, I shouldn't mind so much if I had dozens. Promise?'

So I said, 'Yes, daddy, sorry, I——'

But father interrupted. 'I've simply got to give you a thrashing as well, little 'un, because once or twice before you've said you were sorry, but it will have to be a moral one. I can't thrash a thing your size; why don't you grow? I'm sure you could if you really tried, it's just cussedness. Now you go down to Sam and Ross, they're in the harness room, and tell them you're sorry and that you're going to do what they tell you in future.'

And I said, 'Daddy, I simply couldn't; why, I'd never hear the last of it, I couldn't get it out.'

So father said, 'Well, you can take your choice between your pride and the Hickley Woods, darling.'

So I went down to the harness room and got it out somehow. Ross said, 'Oh, I say, Meg, don't say any more, it won't make a scrap of difference, but if you wouldn't mind about wasps' nests and that kind of thing, we would be so obliged, wouldn't we, Sam?'

And Sam said 'Rather' and gave me a red apple. I always got one from Sam if I were in a row.... Of course, I've had a dog's life with the pair of them ever since.

CHAPTER V

When Ross and I were fifteen we got to know a topping boy named Charlie Foxhill. He is amphidextrous. His father is most frightfully rich. He made his money in cement, but this is never mentioned because Mrs Foxhill is the daughter of an impecunious peer, and she is as proud as the cement is hard. The Foxhills came to live in the next village to ours. My great friend, Monica Cunningham, lives there too, at least she is there sometimes. Her father is a baron, but you would never know it to look at him. He takes a great interest in patent manures and the ten lost tribes.

Charlie is two years older than Ross, but so much shorter that they seem the same age. He is an agnostic. His mother has driven him to it, she is so 'steeped in saints.'

'It's bad enough to be steeped in poets like my sister,' said Ross, 'but saints! I never can imagine how people can stomach all that crowd. They bore me stiff. The only one I like is the chap that finds lost things.

'St Elian?'

'Fat lot you know about saints, Foxhill,' remarked my brother politely.

'I know an awful lot; I've not lived with my mother for nothing,' said Charlie lugubriously.

'Well, I never could see that a saint was anything more than a dead sinner,' remarked my brother, 'and some of them make a perfect nuisance of themselves—look at St Vitus.'

'Oh,' I giggled, but my brother was wound up and ignored my interruption.

'And St Swithin—isn't he the absolute limit? Look how he mucks the summer up if he gets the chance! All because he thought he was going to be buried where he didn't want to be—keeping the feud up all these years, too.'

Charlie admires my friend Monica awfully and calls her a Greek poem because she is so graceful, but Ross says that it is a pity she suffers from pride of race and spends her time in looking up people's pedigrees. Her brother is the Master of Rullerton. Daddy asked her once if she had ever looked up the pedigree of the Master of the Universe, as He was a gentleman on his mother's side, and daddy showed her a funny old book where it said, 'He might, if He had esteemed of the vayne glorye of this world, have borne coat armour.'

That took Monica's fancy frightfully. She said it made Him seem quite interesting. Aunt Amelia thought it 'shocking,' of course, but daddy said,—

'We don't all travel by the same road, Amelia.'

'There is only one way, and it is narrow,' groaned my aunt.

'Yes, but not narrow-minded,' daddy retorted. He is funny.

Though Charlie Foxhill is such a friend of Ross they are not a bit alike; Charlie is so diffident, Ross so sure of everything. But then Charlie has had one of those unfortunate 'Christian upbringings' that daddy calls only another name for spiritual slavery, when square parents try to shove their round children into square holes, and of course the children hate it and some of them go to the devil in the process. Mrs Foxhill actually insists on reading all her children's letters, and expects them to think and feel just as she does about everything.

But Charlie won't be put into his parents' mould, he refuses to be shoved into their square hole, he utterly declines to be steeped in saints. If he differs from his mother on any subject he is answered with a mass of words and arguments, reproaches, or worse still, tears; consequently Charlie says nothing now and veils all he really feels in a cloak of absurdities or feigned indifference.

At first we couldn't get him to give an opinion about anything, especially in front of father, but gradually as he got to know us better and found that Ross expressed his views quite freely and that daddy treated them with respect and consideration, even if they were diametrically opposed to his own, Charlie began gradually to develop and say what he really thought, but always with a certain diffidence as if he half expected a storm of opposition. But he is always courteous about his mother—'steeped in saints' is the only criticism he ever makes. For the rest he is silent and suppressed, but the cold politeness with which he treats his people is quite different from the deference Ross pays to daddy.

Monica, too, is not a bit like me. I always know exactly what I want; she never does—till afterwards. Father says, however, that Monica will be a fine character when she learns that a man can be all the things that really matter, even if he never had a grandfather, and that she will rise to the occasion some day and do the splendid thing even if she doesn't always know whether she wants to play tennis with Ross or Charlie.

CHAPTER VI

When I was sixteen my governess got married and daddy said it was a good opportunity for me to go to school for a bit. I was therefore sent to the one in London where Monica was. The head mistress was a friend of Aunt Amelia. I suppose that's why my prickles were always out and my old Adam gave me such a lot of trouble.

There was that last unfortunate Sunday, for instance. It was the 27th April, and Monica and I awoke at four o'clock. We peeped out of the bedroom window just as the dawn was coming. The London garden had all the glamour of the woods at home, and there in the half light we could see the six or seven trees with bluebells growing round—a mist of blue, enchanting, adorable, divine. The scent blew across the grass and the birds called us. We slipped downstairs and ran over the delicious cool lawn into that lovely blue light at the foot of the trees. We gathered handfuls of blossoms and ferns all drowned with dew. We went quite mad with the call of the spring, and danced, for I thought I heard distant music. It may have been only a blackbird; could it have been the pipes of Pan? Anything was possible that morning. We got back, as we thought unseen, stole some scones and milk, and as we tumbled into bed again Monica swore she heard the cuckoo, but I'm certain it was only the clock on the stairs, because this 'Bird' ooed before it cucked!

Then the same day I behaved badly in church. Of course, the general behaviour of the sons and daughters of the clergy is always more unseemly than that of other people's children. Daddy says it's because they're so frightfully handicapped in having the clergy for their fathers.

But that day two such absurd things happened. I believe even St Paul with his love of decency and order would have been obliged to smile, while Peter, of course, would have giggled. Monica passed me a bit of paper shortly after we arrived, on which was written the mystic message: 'Eyes right. Psalm 57, verse 5. She will remember.' I looked to the right, and seated in the pew immediately in front of us was a spinster of uncertain age in a smart blue toque, in the hollow crown of which lay a complete set of false teeth with an unholy smile still lingering about them. I suppose the poor dear had put them on her hat to remind her to put them in her mouth. I collapsed into weak giggles, which increased when I looked up the Psalm we were about to sing, which contained the verse: 'Whose teeth are spears and arrows.' I am afraid I must confess I didn't attempt to follow the service, I simply lived for verse 5. Sure enough, as Monica had predicted, 'she remembered.' She was singing away lustily, 'And I lie even among the children of men that are set on fire whose——' then a violent start, a wild clutch at the toque, and a dash down the aisle. The churchwarden, who thought she was ill, followed her into the porch with a glass of water.

I could see Monica's shoulders shaking though her face was preternaturally solemn. I felt quite ill with suppressed laughter. I tried to remember all the things I had been taught to think about in church, but I was in that weak state I couldn't stop giggling. The next Psalm began with the question: 'Are your minds set upon righteousness, O ye congregation.' I felt neither Monica nor I could answer in the affirmative.

After a while my eyes stopped running and I was able to attend a little better. Then we had the second lesson. It was Acts xxvii, all about the shipwreck of St Paul. I noticed poor old Admiral Stopford, who is a bit weak in the head, was getting very fidgety. His nurse whispered to him once or twice, but in vain, for when the vicar read how they cast the cargo over to lighten the ship he suddenly got up and said loudly,—

'Never ought to have been necessary, bad navigation, bad navigation.'

His nurse hurried him out, purple in the face, and Monica and I followed. I felt if I couldn't laugh aloud I should spontaneously combust. We found a flat tombstone in a secluded part of the churchyard on which we sat and rocked.

On arriving back at the house there was a most frightful row because one of the neighbours had telephoned to say that he had seen us in the garden in the early morning. The head mistress said we had brought disgrace on the school and that I was the chief offender. She telegraphed to father,—

'Seriously worried about your daughter come the first thing on Monday.'

Daddy was frantic and thought that I was dying, and wired to Ross at Harrow to go to Hampstead at once, and that he would come up by the first train he could catch.

Ross was out, so he only got to the school half an hour before father. Meantime Aunt Amelia had been sent for, and I was in the head mistress's room being rowed when Ross was announced. He looked quite old as he came in and said, 'Is my sister still alive?'

He was so relieved when he saw me that he was just going to kiss me, but Aunt Amelia stopped him and said he'd better not.

'Have you got another cold?' he asked, 'but I'm not afraid of germs.'

Ross wouldn't sit down because I wasn't allowed to. I felt like a prisoner at the bar while he was told all my crimes from the beginning of time to 'this last disgraceful episode which could not be passed over.'

Ross could not see their point of view at all. When she told him about the scones he exclaimed,

'But if my sister was hungry surely——?' and she said, 'But is that any reason why your sister should leave the house in the middle of the night?' and Aunt Amelia remarked she did not know what my dear dead mother would say if she could know it.

My quick hurt then! I know it's awfully weak-minded to cry when you're in a row, but I couldn't stand that bit about mother. Ross seemed to get suddenly about seven feet high and his face went like a granite sphinx, and he put his arm round me and said, 'There darling,' several times.

'Oh, Ross,' I sobbed, 'I never left the house at all, I only ran out into the garden.'

'Of course, darling.'

'And it wasn't the middle of the night either, Ross, it was four o'clock in the morning.'

And he agreed that it was quite different.

When daddy came the Mistress regretted that I would have to be expelled, but she trusted that a father's care and watchful eye were all I needed. She hoped and believed I had no vice.

I cried some more against father's sleeve then, because Ross had said once that people were only expelled for really rotten things,—

'It was the bluebells, daddy.'

'Of course it was, darling,' he said, 'but they're heaps bigger in Devonshire.'

'That child is on the road to ruin,' groaned my aunt.

Father said to Ross in the cab that crabbed age and youth never could live together, and that woman was enough to make an Evangelical parson turn Papist.

But something happened while I was at school that I can't forget. We were allowed occasionally to go to Evensong, and once in the dimness of the church I saw a man gazing at me. He looked like a soldier in the Indian army—not a bit handsome, but he had a certain rugged strength that made his face seem rather splendid. The keen, clear eyes were gray and stern, but softened as they looked at me. I felt as if I knew him. I have often thought since of that 'absent face that fixed me,' and I find myself comparing other men with him, and somehow, I can't explain it very well, I think I feel a little older since I saw him.

CHAPTER VII

Oh, it was topping to get home. Nannie said I was most frightfully thin. She seemed quite worried about it, but the cook said consolingly,—

'Oh, we all ebbs and flows, especially gals. She only wants the crip o' the crame and an egg beat up in a drop of good milk.'

The next day I woke up with a spot on my chest, and Nannie said I was feverish, and daddy got in a panic and sent for Doctor Merriwater. His name is Tobias, but we always call him Toby. When he came he looked at my spot most earnestly and said,—

'Why, good gracious, the child has got the measles, the one and only measle, she's in a frightfully dangerous state. Don't let her get up for at least two days and I'll send you round a collar and a chain at once or I'm afraid her measle will be gone before the morning.'

When I was better I asked father if I could be presented, as I had left school, and Monica was going to be.

'No,' he said, 'I've had quite enough of London for you for the moment.'

'Oh, daddy, why not?'

Father turned autocratic then and said, 'Because I don't choose, darling.' So, of course, I couldn't say any more.

But after a minute he twinkled at me,—

'Sorry, little 'un, but a parson has to "rule his children!" It's one of Timothy's conditions.'

'Oh, that was deacons, daddy! and you're a vicar.'

'Or if "a man desires the office of a bishop," Meg.'

'But do you, father?' I asked gravely, 'for if you don't you haven't got a leg to stand on, and I——'

'No, I don't desire the office of a bishop, Meg; I don't want to do anything different from what I am doing now. I don't, I don't.'

'Why, father,' I exclaimed, 'does anybody want you to?'

'I loathe natives,' he replied, and went out of the room hurriedly.

Sometimes I don't understand my father; he says things that don't seem to have the slightest bearing on the subject under discussion.

When Ross came home in the summer for the holidays he was bigger than ever. I had the greatest difficulty in keeping him in his place. He seemed to think he could go straight on from that moment when he went seven feet high and said, 'There, darling.' He actually had the cheek to say, 'Because I don't choose' to me once, and we had words about it!

Aunt Amelia invited herself to stay for six weeks while he was home. Relations were slightly strained all the time and when she said to father in front of Ross, 'I hope Meg has been quite steady since.' I really thought they were both going to blow up, but we escaped with a slammed door and father's threat to go into lodgings.

Ross calmed down later in the day and observed that 'It was a quaint family, all cracked on something: Aunt Amelia on Calvinism, Uncle Jasper on Archæology, Cousin Emily on animals, and you,' he added rudely, 'on—er bluebells.'

'And daddy?' I asked, ignoring the insult.

'Oh, daddy's passion is souls,' and he changed the conversation quickly. But I was never so horrified in all my life. To think that my brother should compare father with Aunt Amelia.

'Souls,' I gasped, 'whatever do you mean? Are you ab-so-lu-tely dotty, Ross?'

'You never can see anything farther than your nose, Meg. What do you suppose he said he was going to change the kids' service for that Sunday?'

For 'that Sunday' was the one that comes once a month, when the village children have to go to church, to say the catechism to father, instead of having Sunday school. He said at lunch if we had no other engagements he'd be most awfully obliged if Aunt Amelia and I would go and help keep the kids quiet as several of the teachers were away.

Aunt Amelia observed that she never had engagements on Sunday (she is tiring), and of course I said I would go, though privately I thought it was a sin and a shame to spend that gorgeous afternoon in learning what your godfathers and godmothers did for you. Ours never did anything for us, except to send us ten bob at Christmas, though Ross's godmother says she is going to leave him all her money and me her diamonds.

It was so hot in church, and the children were so naughty. The small boy next to me was a little devil. His name was Tommy Vellacott. He had a picture in his Prayer Book and he would keep sticking pins in it. Father stopped once and asked what he was doing.

'Pwicking holes in the Virgin Mawry,' he said, and all the children tittered. Daddy started the Catechism again and said to Tommy,—

'What is thy duty towards God?'

Tommy looked bored but replied that his duty was to believe in Him, to fear Him, and to love Him.'

Father seemed to think it was a heaven-sent opportunity to point a practical moral, so remarked that if children really loved God, they ought not to bring a dead mouse in church to frighten the others with, and that if Tommy were sorry he had better put it in the porch. (That's the worst of father, he isn't satisfied with repentance; you have to burn the vanities as well).

'Don't love God,' said Tommy.

Father stared down at the little heathen with a startled look on his face.

'You don't love God, Tommy?'

'No,' said Tommy, who is nothing if not truthful, 'course I don't, only believe in Him.'

I thought it was the most humorous thing I had ever heard, but Aunt Amelia was horrified, and at tea said that the present generation was hopeless and that Tommy's remark was a specimen of the apostasy of the age.

'Well, I belong to the church militant, Amelia, so I'm not willing to leave it at that,' said daddy, rather as if he were trying to keep his temper. So I, by way of pouring oil on the troubled waters, said,—

'But, daddy, don't most people feel like Tommy? They "believe," but I think it's most frightfully difficult to love the Man of Sorrows.'

Father looked at me with much the same expression as he had when he looked at Tommy, but he only said gently,—

'Darling, I don't think you will love the Man of Sorrows until you've become acquainted with grief yourself.'

I felt a pig for the rest of the day; it seemed such a rotten thing to have said to father.

The next time the kids had to go to church father said he was going to chuck the catechism and tell them stories instead, and let them choose their own hymns.

Aunt Amelia (who was still staying with us for our sins) observed that nothing was gained by leaving the old paths; and then father made another of those extraordinary remarks that don't seem to have the slightest connection with the rest of the conversation.

'"A Hindoo, though dying of thirst, will refuse water if offered in a foreign cup, but he will drink the same water if offered in his own."'

When daddy got into church he said to the kids,—

'It's much too hot to stay indoors this lovely day, we'll all go out and sit in the shade in the meadow.'

The children were frightfully bucked, and when they were all seated daddy said,—

'Now, somebody choose a hymn.'

Tommy Vellacott said he would like the one about the little boy who stole the old gentleman's watch. Father, with great difficulty, discovered that he meant

'The old man, meek and mild.

The Priest of Israel slept.

His watch the Temple child

The little Levite kept.'

I could feel Aunt Amelia's expression down my backbone.

Then daddy said,—

'Now, children, I will tell you a story.'

'A Sunday one?' asked Tommy, and when father said, 'Oh, yes, certainly,' he appeared to be about to take no further interest in the proceedings.

Father has a beautiful voice for story telling. He seems to fill it at will with fun and laughter, magic, mystery, tenderness, and tears. I wish I could put down on paper its beautiful tone and quality and show you the gentle softening of his strong face as he watched the little children sitting so contentedly in the meadow, listening to his tale.

Always after that daddy told them the old stories in a new way and the children were so interested and liked to choose the hymns. (They loved the ones for the burial of the dead). One day Tommy Vellacott sent daddy this note,—

'Please Mother says i can't go to church this afternoon and nor can emily she give me a green apple and i have got the dire rear and so has she so will you come to our house and tell us a story please your respectful tommy.'

And after the children's service, when daddy went down the village to see his two sick parishioners he had on his 'contented look,' as if what Ross calls his 'passion for souls' was somehow being satisfied by Tommy's desire to hear a Bible story. He is so dear and funny.

CHAPTER VIII

When Ross went to Sandhurst I got influenza, and then when I was better I got it again. Toby was very angry and said if I were going to turn into a trap for that bug he'd chuck up his profession and take in the village washing. By the time I had recovered the second time it was nearly Christmas, and Aunt Constance went to London, and I invited myself to lunch with Uncle Jasper on my seventeenth birthday, and oh! why I've got up to Chapter I again.... So the General Public can behold me now quite grown up, staid, and in my right mind, having been baptized, confirmed, and had the measles. But whatever else can I put in my novel? A little while after this I asked Uncle Jasper.

'Why, darling,' he said, 'I thought you just made it up as you went along.'

'But could you seriously advise me?' I ventured.

So he remarked that all the chapters must be about the same length and must be linked together by a strong plot, 'The General Public likes strong meat,' he said, and he looked at me and then across at father, and they laughed and telegraphed things to one another.

Nannie is the only person who really helps me. She said,—

'Why, you haven't got anything in yet about the old church, dearie, and after that I should write a chapter every day about what you do.'

'But the chapters won't be all the same length then.'

'I shouldn't worry about a thing like that,' said Nannie with her usual homely common sense, 'because even the General Public knows that some days are much longer than others. Why the calendar marks the longest and the shortest, doesn't it.'

'Yes,' I said doubtfully.

'Well, then!' said Nannie.

So I will tell about the old church and "marey Falkner's" chemise.