Spring in a Shropshire Abbey

“There her be,” she cried triumphantly, “sure enough, same as a galenny’s nest, snug and safe.”

I scrambled up the bank, and Mouse followed with a bound. The old body was almost breathless for a minute, but went on pointing like a pointer at the shrub.

“What is it for?” I asked. The shrub in question was a bay tree, and in a severe winter in the nineties, had almost died, but last spring it revived somewhat, and sent out a few weakly branches this summer.

“What does I want it for?” repeated Mrs. Eccles. “Why I wants it for salvation; to save my boy from the Lightning.” Then she went on to tell me, with a burst of eloquence, about the Shropshire belief, to the effect that a spray of bay-leaf, or a feather of an eagle, if worn in a cap or hat, can preserve the wearer from lightning.

“The big hawk’s feather, there’s none as can get now,” she said. “The railways and the holiday-makers have killed they, but they have left the bay trees.”

Then I remembered having heard that Mrs. Eccles’s husband, some forty odd years ago, had been killed whilst haymaking, struck by lightning. “’Twas the death of Job, his fork,” an old man had once told me. “The lightning came clean down, and struck him by the command of the Lord.”

“If my gude man had had but a sprig, he might have been hearty now,” broke from Mrs. Eccles; and she went on to tell me that her grandson, Joseph Holroyd, “war goin’ to work for Farmer Church, and that she had come here, for I know’d as you’d provide.”

I opened the little knife on my chain, and cut off a sprig and gave it to my old friend.

AN OLD PAGAN BELIEF

She bobbed low, and scuttled away. “Won’t you have a cup of tea?” I called after her. But she shook her head, and cried out, “Nay, nay, I have my widdies (ducks) to feed;” and as I stood and looked, the little brown figure disappeared up the drive. When I went back to the east garden, I thought over my conversation with Mrs. Eccles, and I recollected having read somewhere, that the Romans believed that a phœnix’s feather, if it could be obtained and worn in the bosom, would avert disaster; and a learned friend once told me that the Emperor Tiberius was much alarmed by thunder, and always wore a wreath of laurel round his neck if the weather was stormy, because he believed that laurels were never blasted by lightning. So I reflected that my old friend, bred amidst the wilds of Shropshire, held, after all, unconsciously an old pagan belief, of which the plume from the big hawk was only another version of the phœnix’s feather, whilst the laurel and the bays sprang, likely enough, from the same legend. Whilst revolving the old beliefs of past empires in my mind, I was called back to the present by Bess rushing up to me, and calling out —

“Where have you been Mum, Mum? We shall be late, I know we shall be late. And if Hals didn’t find some one to meet him, what would he say?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said penitently.

“Nor me,” retorted Bess, indignantly.

So without more ado, my daughter, Prince Charming and I walked up a golden field of glittering buttercups to the station. We waited on the platform. The train was late – when isn’t the train late in the country? – and Bess and I sat down on the long bench that faced the line.

Bess seemed lost in a brown study. “A penny for your thoughts, miss,” I said.

“Mum,” replied Bess, dreamily, “I am thinking and thinking – ”

“Yes, dear?”

“What is the use of London?”

The subject is rather large, I urged. But Bess had the sharp, incisive intellect of a quick child, and stood firm to her opinion.

“I don’t see,” she said, “that noise, shows, and smart people make use. Why should poor children be taken to London? If the grown-ups want it, they had better go there by themselves.”

“My dear little person,” I said, “even the youngest of others must sometimes do disagreeable things, even in the twentieth century.”

But this was a hard matter for an only child to understand, and Bess would have none of it.

At the same moment, we heard the noise and rattle of the approaching train, and our discussion broke off abruptly. A second later the train had stopped, and the guard alighted and opened a first-class compartment, and proceeded to lift out little Hals. Bess dashed up breathless. The children were too excited to embrace each other. They only rushed to each other, took each other’s hands, and went on dangling them, and blushing like two rose buds. Whereupon so, Prince Charming fell with a yelp to the ground. Happily, I was by to pick up and console the poor little puppy. A quiet, nice-looking young woman came out, bearing in her arms a host of packages and rugs. In a minute or two Hals’ luggage was collected, and we walked down across the buttercup field to the old Abbey, whilst swallows flew overhead, and sunshine chased purple clouds across the sky.

HALS ARRIVES

“Fräulein is not here?” I heard Bess say to Hals.

“No,” answered Hals.

“Then,” whispered Bess, “I shall be able to pray to-night. For all God lives so far, I think He can understand a girl sometimes.”

“That’s handy,” agreed Hals, shortly.

“Yes,” answered Bess; “He knew what I wanted at Christmas all of His own accord, and now He has left out Fräulein, and He couldn’t have done better, even if He had been papa.”

To this, Hals made no answer, but both children danced with glee. Then followed tea, and two hours afterwards, bed.

When my little girl was in bed, I went up and found her, and said the last good-night. Her eyes shone like little stars, and she put her arms round my neck.

“Mum – Mum,” she said, so I went quite close. “I thought,” said my little maid, “when I had got Prince Charming, that I never could want anything else, but I do now want something bad – bad.”

“Yes?” I answered.

“Is there nowhere,” pursued my little girl, “where one can buy a brother? I want one so bad.”

The children and I passed a happy week – a week of golden sunshine. Miss Weldon went off and spent the time with a cousin at Hereford, and I was left alone with lad and lass. We read, and talked, and played. There were no lessons, but I told them “lovely stories.” Beautiful old legends, pretty tales from history, and I read aloud from Hans Andersen, and parts of Charles Kingsley’s delicious “Water Babies.”

“I think,” said Bess one day as I closed the book, “that I love Tom best of all as a little sweep.”

“Yes,” said Hals, “for he was so game, running across the moor all by himself. When I am a man, I hope I shall never be afraid. I am sure my father never is.” Then, after a pause, he added, “Some day I shall be a soldier, and fight the king’s enemies.”

“So shall I,” said Bess.

But this Hals would not allow. “Girls cannot fight,” he assured me, gravely. “They can only scratch. Besides, boys cannot fight girls, so it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Then I must fight girls,” said Bess, sadly; “but I’m afraid that wouldn’t be much fun, for girls mostly pinch, and run away.”

The weather was beautiful during Hals’ stay with us. The Shropshire fields and woods seemed all under an enchanter’s wand. Blue mist lay on the Wrekin and on the Clee. Sunshine glowed all the day, and in the evening, glorious sunsets, and tranquil twilights. After tea, we sometimes took Jill, the little pony, and the children rode one behind the other along the lanes. All the hedges were redolent with honeysuckle, and great pink sprays of the most exquisitely lovely of all flowers, the wild dog-rose, curled over branch and stem; whilst larks sang over green seas of rippling wheat, which moved in broad waves over stormless, summer seas.

WE MEET THADY

Far away I showed the children one evening the Brown Clee, the land of witches and romance to Shropshire youth. No rain fell, no tempests gathered. It was June, and the perfection of June weather. Sheets of buttercups glistened in the meadows, moon-daisies nodded in the upland grasses, and over disused lime-kilns blew beds of rosy thyme and rock-roses, whilst here and there, on the outskirts of forest lands, we found the sweetest of all wild flowers – pale butterfly orchises, with their strange sweet perfume, which, as Bess said, made you long to live, only in afternoons. Thady one day joined us in one of our expeditions. He got up from a bush suddenly as we were passing – bare-legged, jovial, courteous, as only an Irish lad can be.

“The ‘top of the morning,’ mam,” he cried, and his face lit up with a simultaneous smile.

“It is afternoon,” I laughed.

“Whatever the hour or the season, ’tis only well I wish yer,” he replied, with the spontaneous politeness of the Celt.

“Have you anything pretty to show us?” I asked.

“Yes,” repeated Bess, “show us something pretty.”

“Well,” said Thady, looking down, “it’s getting late, I’m thinking, for seeing sights; most that’s young is getting fledged. But I know a field where there’s a lot of little leverets, soft as down, pretty as kittens.”

So we followed on. I led Jill, with Bess riding on a boy’s saddle, and Hals followed behind. We passed a wild, rough field, with the steep pitch of the Edge Wood on one side, and the view of a great stretch of country up to Shrewsbury, and beyond. To the west we saw Caer Caradoc and the Long-mynd sleeping in purple haze. Then we passed through a hunting wicket, and went into another rough-and-tumble field, with rampant thistles, full of old disused lime-kilns, and sheep-nipt bushes of thorns.

“What lovely places to play in!” cried Bess, enthusiastically. “Perhaps real gnomes and goblins live there, and if we stayed till the church-tower clock struck twelve, we might really see them in red caps. The sort, mamsie, that you and I know. Perhaps,” she added, “then they might bring us gold. You know they do.”

“Begorra!” cried Thady, indulgently, “if yer was to come here at midnight, yer couldn’t count them for jostling, the leprechauns and such like gentry. They be plentiful as faiberries in Muster Burbidge’s garden in August.”

At this Hals said gravely, “I should like to come and see them one night, although I have never heard my father speak of them. I don’t think he knows many goblins at Westminster.”

“Westminster,” retorted Thady, magnificently, “is a poor place for meeting anything but common men and women.”

Then we walked on in single file, for I had to guide the pony with care, for the pitches on each side of the path were steep and slippery. In one part of the field there was a large round clump of white dog roses, such as are often to be found in waste places, with brilliant yellow stamens and bronze-coloured stalks and buds.

“I think ’tis here as you’ll find, missie, the little yellow fluffs at home,” said Thady.

Evidently in the innermost recesses of the rose bush there was a fine scent of something very good to the canine mind, for Mouse pricked up her ears, sniffed boisterously, and began to move her tail like a fox-hound drawing a covert. Then with a great swirl and pounce, she darted right into the brake, bending and breaking all by her weight, and brought out in her mouth a little ball of fluff. The poor little creature screamed in terror, almost like a child.

I rushed forward. “Mouse, Mouse!” I cried, “drop it, drop it!”

THE LITTLE HARE

Mouse looked at me reproachfully out of her topaz eyes, held it, but allowed me to pass my fingers between her great jaws and to release the little captive. Great was my delight to find that poor little puss was quite unhurt, only very wet with my dog’s saliva.

I sat down, and Thady lifted off Bess from the pony, and then the children flocked round to see the long-eared little creature I was holding in my arms.

“Isn’t it pretty?” I said, and held up the little tawny ball of fluff. “Look what lovely brown eyes it has, and what tender shades of buff and fawn are in its long ears.”

“Let us take him home,” cried Bess, enthusiastically.

“But,” I asked, “how about Tramp and Tartar? They would not be gentle like Mouse.” And I added, “It was lucky that they did not come with us this afternoon. They would not only have caught the little leveret, they would have killed him, too.”

Bess agreed. “They are very wicked for all their nice ways.” And then she added dreamily, “I wonder if terriers ever go to heaven.”

“Begorra! if it is the holy Mother that has a fancy for the breed, I’ll be bound she gets them past St. Peter. ’Dade,” said Thady, “if I was the saint, I’d never shut the door in a good bitch’s face.”

“Well,” says Bess, after a little pause, “for all terriers kill things, they love us badly; and, besides, there may be rats in heaven.”

“How about heaven, then, being quite a perfect place?” I asked, for I must plead guilty to a strong dislike to rats.

“Mum, Mum,” answered Bess, impatiently, “you must leave the poor Lord a few rats, or what would his poor dogs do?”

I laughed and had no answer ready, for a child’s wit is generally the hardest to fight. The best being bred by simplicity and kindness of heart. A minute later I slipped back my little furry nursling into the rose-bush, and we threaded our way across the fields.

As we retraced our steps no bird sang, only the faint barking of a dog in some distant farm reached our ears, and away in the hollow came the far-off sound of distant church bells. We walked along grassy fields, down dim lanes, and beside the budding wheat.

Thady was to come down and get a slice of cake and a glass of milk. “With raisins, real raisins!” exclaimed Bess. The prospect of the feast opened his heart.

“Begorra, I’ll tell you at last,” he cried, with a sly chuckle, and he bubbled over with laughter. “You shall hear all about the job. Yer leddyship,” continued Thady, “has taught me to hate the thieving of a poor bird’s nest, same as the blessed Virgin has taught me to be a Christian.”

I nodded in approbation, but did not quite understand; but then that, as Bess says, “never matters, if you’re not found out.” In a minute Thady went on – whilst I led both children, mounted on old Jill – and told me of an adventure of his.

“It was this ways,” he said. “Two gentlemen last month came over from Manchester, and they put up at the Raven. I watched them come, out of the corner of my eye – and ’tis little,” Thady added, “that escapes me at such times. So when they had been round the churchyard, and peered at the ruins, as is the habits of town-bred folks, I made so bold as to approach them. Indade, I had kept, ever since they left the hotel, remarkably near them. My mother watched me up the Bull Ring, for she knowed that I had a bit of somethin’ up my sleeve, and as I passed, lookin’ as dacent as a lad that had just been bishopped, she whispered, ‘Ye spalpeen, what be yer tricks?’ But I shook her off, as a lad of spirit should, for when yer minded to have a bit of fun, give yer mother a wide berth sure.

“Such is the advice of Thady Malone,” and my little friend drew himself up loftily, and spoke as one who had solved a hard problem.

THE RUN OF THE SEASON

“I followed the gentlemen right enough,” he continued, “and never took my eyes off them, but kept on with them, eyeing and peering round, same as a hawk above a clutch of chickens. And by their talk I made out it was after specimens that they had come. I crept round by a bush, and discovered, right enough, it was after birds and eggs that they had journeyed; and at last one of ’em, the tall, dark, lean ’un, he called out to me, and he said to the fat, sandy-whiskered one that was standing by, ‘Perhaps this lad could help us.’ Then he turned to me. ‘My lad,’ he said, ‘we want to go over a bit of wild country, and to see a bit of wild life. Take us to a wood that is known here as the Edge Wood. They say rare birds still nest there. Hawks, we’ve heard, some of the scarce tomtits, and one or two of the rare fly-catchers, and we want to get some eggs.’ Said I to myself, ‘Thady, yer shall have fine sport.’ But one of them, the lean ’un, had a nasty stick, so I said, ‘Thady, my man, be careful;’ but comforted myself after a bit, for ’tis only on louts’ backs that sticks need fall. Then I stood up and answered bold, ‘Is it the big hawk that your honours want, or the fern owl, the sheriff-man, or any other fowl?’ Begorra, and indade yer leddyship, there was no fowl that I wouldn’t have pretended acquaintanceship with. And they nodded, and I nodded, and they, the fat and the lean, they winked, and I winked, and they talked of eggs and fine prices, and they offered me shillin’s, beautiful silver shillin’s; but I said I’d serve them for the pleasure, for though silver is good, a bit antic is better. Besides,” added Thady, gallantly, “what her leddyship has taught me, I canna unlearn,” and Thady bowed to me with the instinct of a born courtier.

“So I started at a trot,” pursued Thady, “and I sang out, ‘Gentlemen, I’m yer man,’ and I gave a bow and then away, as hard as I could make the pace, and they followed on, like two mad bullocks, or fox-hounds in full cry, and away we tore, over the fields, up the lanes, along the high-road where need be. On, on, I headed ’em like a young he-goat. I’m allus in training, and they followed. I gave ’em a splendid lead over field and fallow, and whenever the fat ’un panted bad, I told ’im to cheer up, for the fern owl and the great hawk’s nests were just ahead.

“At last they began to get a bit rusty. Like enough, by the twinkle of my eye, they began to fear as their cases would never get filled. So I shouted out, as if I were leading the king’s army. ‘Keep up your peckers, misters, a field more and yer’ll see the great hawk hisself,’ and so on up a sharpish pull. I looked back, and saw ’em fair sick – the lean one coming on, but the fat sandy ’un fit to burst. I stopped to catch the breeze, and in the pause I shouted out, ‘Yer’ll find the nest with old Bolas, or where folks says the crows fly at nights,’ and I laughed; and then, begorra, I ran like the best Jack-hare that ever I set eyes on. And when they guessed I had had a bit of a spree, they didn’t take it kindly, not at all, at all, but called out no end of bad words – words,” said Thady, sanctimoniously, “that I never could repeat in your leddyship’s hearing, and that shocked even poor me. So I kept at a proper distance, for the stick that the lean gent had was a right nasty one, and,” added Thady, “a wise man only stops to argue with men of his own size. But I did hear they went up to the station that evening, those two poor gentlemen with never an egg or a grub in their cases, and the porter did say that they made tracks to Manchester like two bears with sore heads. ’Tis wonderful how some folks can never see a joke.”

THE NATURALISTS GO EMPTY AWAY

“Few of us can do that when the joke goes against us,” I answered laughing. “But I am glad, Thady, that you played them a trick. Naturalists of that sort are a pest. In the name of science, they rob our woods, and exterminate all our rare birds and butterflies. Every honest man’s hand should be against them.”

At this Thady grinned all over, “Indade,” he said, “I’ll remember yer leddyship’s words of wisdom to my dying day, and never let go by a chance of honest amusement.”

So speaking we reached the old Abbey Farmery. Hals and Bess, drowsy from their long expedition, were lifted off the pony half asleep. We all had a standing meal, which, as Bess said, was much better than sitting down, because you never eat what you don’t want; and then the young life vanished – Bess and my little guest to bed, and Thady into the silent fields, and only Mouse was left to keep me company. I agreed that evening with the children, that it is very nice sometimes to have no dinner, and to return to simple habits, because the sense so of wood and field lingers longer with you.

CHAPTER VII

JULY

“As late each flower that sweetest blows,I plucked the garden’s pride;Within the petals of a rose,A sleeping love I spied.”Coleridge.

I wandered round the garden some ten days later. It was July, the Queen of Summer in the North. I heard the swish of the mowers’ scythes, as wave after wave of blossoming grass fell beneath their feet. As I looked, I noticed that the trees had taken a darker, fuller shade of green, and that the apple and emerald tints which delighted me so much in budding June, had fled before the fierce days of full summer heat. Although the lawns were still verdant, and such as you could only see where the summer rainfall is great, all traces of spring were gone. The polyanthus and cowslips’ umbels were crowned with seeds, and the narcissi in the grass had almost vanished. Birds, that a few weeks ago were funny little fluffy creatures, with orange, gaping throats, were now strong on the wing. Tramp and Tartar pursued one day a thrush across the lawn. I ran out of the house to save him, but found, to my relief, that he could take good care of himself. With a triumphant scream he flew to the top of the high yew hedge. In vain the two little terriers leapt and whimpered below, and besought him to come down and be killed. For all he was young, he was wise, and continued to sit on a twig, and to look down on their efforts with complacent indifference.

MOSS ROSES IN BLOOM

When I went into the walled garden, I found the moss roses in full blossom. They are most beautiful, the most delicate, perhaps, of all the roses. There was an old-fashioned pink, such as one used to see at Covent Garden Market years ago.

I had in my row Blanche Moreau, an exquisite paper white, Maître Soisons, another beautiful white, and the crested and deep purple Deuil de Paul Fontaine. How delicious they all were! Just a little sticky, perhaps, but very sweet; especially an old cottage pink variety that I was given from a garden at Harley, and the name of which I have never known. The kind donor, an old dame, I remember, told me, when she gave me a cutting and I pressed for the name, that it hadn’t no name as far as she knew, but that she called it her “double sweetness,” for it was to her nose, she affirmed, “honey and candy in one.”

Then I noted, bursting into bloom on the other side of the path, rows of Chinese Delphiniums of all colours, that Burbidge had raised from some seed sent to me from a lovely Scotch garden in the far north. The blossoms were of all colours. There were some of an exquisite watery tender turquoise blue, some deep blue de Marie, and others, a faint and celestial tint, as of the sky on soft February days. Besides these there were opal twilights, and darkest indigoes.

I paused and looked down the Ercal gravel path, and stood gazing at my forests of peonies. The English ones were over, but round the clematises were masses of the Chinese sorts. They were of all colours – crimson, carmine, white, purple, cream, pink, rose. How wonderfully beautiful they were, what satiny pinks, what splendid roses, what creamy whites!

In the borders I noticed a few plants of the beautiful tree or Moutan peony, the most glorious kind of all, but which had flowered rather earlier. My plants as yet were small, but “Elisabeth” had had one blossom of deepest scarlet. And I was led to hope that Athlete, Comte de Flandres, and Lambertiana would be strong enough next year to be allowed to flower.

A few steps beyond I paused to look at my Austrian briar hedge, which was then literally, a line of flame in my garden. It was a glorious note of colour, and planted next to the hedge were patches of purple peonies. What a beautiful contrast the two made! one that Sandro Botticelli loved. Then I made my way to a bed of hybrid teas.

These delightful roses, as has been justly said, combine all that is best of old and new. Almost all of them are sweet scented, and even in cold latitudes they flower twice, freely, in each year. Amongst those that I love best are Augustine Guinoiseau, and Camoens. Beyond these, on the southern side of the garden, extend my great bed of hybrid perpetuals, which stand our cold Shropshire climate so bravely and bloom often into late November. I stopped to admire a beautiful specimen of the Earl of Dufferin that seemed almost purple in its sombre magnificence, and felt almost dazzled at the splendour of Éclair. Then I paused to smell a Fisher Holmes, and gathered an almost black rose, which Burbidge told me a few days ago was a new rose to him, and was called the Black Prince. Such a mysterious black rose as it was, with a faint sweet distant smell, like new-mown grass after a summer shower.

IRISES AND ROSES

Between each row of roses I have planted rows of the beautiful English and Spanish irises in turns. These bulbs, I find, like the damp and shade caused by the neighbourhood of the bushes, and the effect of yellow, purple, blue, and lavender, between the pink, red, and white of the roses was enchantingly beautiful. Then I looked upwards and was delighted to see that my Crimson Ramblers and Ayrshire and Penzance briers were all ramping away to my, and to their, hearts’ content over their pillars, and covering their bowers and arches with trails and clusters of glory. I call my arches and bowers my garden in the clouds. Nobody quite knows how beautiful the Crimson Rambler can be till they have seen it against a background of summer sky. Just out of the garden stretched the plantation of firs, Scotch and Austrian, with a border of ribes, laurels, hollies, and yews. The plantation is very small, but it gives a sense of silence between the Abbey and the old town.