by A. A. Milne
It was as she did it.
Now why on earth, said Reginald, watching her, do I think I’m cleverer than she is? She can do a hundred things that I can’t do, and why should my things be the test of cleverness and not hers? And why do I tell myself like a prig that she isn’t as responsive to beauty as I am? Why should she be? She is Beauty. Is God as interested in the Theory of Relativity as some tuppenny-ha’penny Professor of Physics? How can He be? He is the Theory of Relativity. Anyway, I want my tea.
‘Well done, Sylvia.’
They walk down the steps and through the old stone court-yard into the house.
‘I do love you with your hair cut,’ says Sylvia. ‘Except for the slight brushiness. I wish you could take your own brushes with you.’
‘Well, that’s not for another month, thank Heaven. I hate leaving the country at this time of year. I hate London. Hooray for Westaways and Sylvia.’
He was disappointed in London. Whatever future was awaiting Bindweed in the country, London for the moment gave no signs of it.
Chapter Three
I
REGINALD often wondered, dumbly, why he was not allowed to brain Betty Baxter; why it should be wrong, uncivic, immoral, to do the natural thing; but he never felt more resentful of the inhibitions of modern life than when she talked about Westaways. She called it ‘amusing’.
She called many things amusing which did not noticeably amuse. Her lips were so much ruddier than the cherry that Baxter, easy-going man, was moved one morning to an ‘Oh, really, Betty! Oh, well, if you like it’; after which he resumed his breakfast.
‘What?’ said Betty innocently.
‘Why women want to stick paint on themselves—who’s supposed to admire it? Who are you supposed to deceive? Even the blindest lunatic—oh, well, if you like it.’
‘It happens to be the fashion.’
Baxter grunted.
‘I think it’s rather amusing,’ said Betty.
The Baxters were not really country, because they had a house in London. In London, of course, everybody is amusing, so there was more excuse for Betty, and less for her husband. You can’t spend five days of the week being really funny, and then relapse into dullness over the week-end. Naturally she brought her lip-stick with her.
Westaways was strange and charming and beautiful. Any of those adjectives Reginald would allow you. Even, if you liked the word, you might call it quaint. It was the wrong word, but perhaps you were one of those people who liked using the wrong word. Quaint was not actually offensive. But ‘amusing’ with its hint of superiority was forbidden. The Baxter woman was no longer invited to Westaways . . . However, she continued to come.
Westaways was a little oasis in the rolling fields, walled in to preserve its flavour. Like most cottages in this part of England it had been a farm; like most cottages it had made iron and bricks. Let other, statelier mansions claim that it was they (as undoubtedly it was) who boarded Elizabeth, hid Charles and introduced Henry to Anne. We are humbler. We merely say that we forged the last iron gates of the country-side, we baked the first bricks. And if we are told that a good many last gates seemed to have been forged in this part of the world, a good many first bricks baked, we answer that this is not more surprising than that Elizabeth was always sleeping round about here, Charles always hiding and Henry always being introduced. In short, that there are plenty of impostors about, but that we are the genuine thing.
Westaways was within rectangular stone walls, built centuries ago as if to say to the world, ‘I don’t care who has the rest of you, but this bit’s mine.’ Naturally, as soon as the wall was built, the owner found that he had spoken too quickly, and that the boundaries of the outside world might very well withdraw a hundred yards or so. The wall was now his inner fortress, a strip of land round it his moat. The barn in which Sylvia has just put the car was outside the castle walls. When the original Westaways had pulled up his drawbridge and let down the portcullis, the Morris (if he had had one) was abandoned to the enemy. In case there were still enemies about, Reginald locked up the barn, and put the key in the gutter, a place where nobody but himself and Sylvia, and anybody else who wanted temporary shelter for a car, would think of looking. The car parked, the iron gates (‘the last iron gates of the country-side’, or not, we can’t be sure) were now waiting for the visitors’ entrance. Perhaps if her ladyship were making a formal call she went through them, a footman or two having first unfastened them. Ordinary people just stepped over the stile which adjoined them, and found themselves within the high stone walls and in an apple-orchard. Slowly the orchard became more formal as they followed the little path; they were among marigolds suddenly and fingering their ties or powdering their noses; the path became steps down a rock-garden; now they were in a stone-paved courtyard, with a pool in the middle; and there opposite was the house, L-shaped, filling up two of the sides. Most amusing.
The other side of the house was not so funny. There were lawns and flowers and brick paths, almost as they might have been in anybody else’s garden; there was a door in the wall for tradesmen, which was fairly amusing; there were the bee-hives, more flowers, and what had once been a duck-pond, but was now a pond in which wild duck nested; and beneath the lower wall a little river went peacefully on its way.
‘And how is that delightful Westaways?’ Betty Baxter would ask, meeting Reginald at her house or another’s.
What’s the answer. What is the answer? Forbidden a battle-axe Reginald can think of none. He achieves a smile.
‘Mr. Wellard has the most amusing house you ever saw,’ she says to the strange woman in a pink jumper, standing by.
‘Oh?’ says the strange woman, with the reserved interest of one who has now nearly, but not quite, been introduced to Mr. Wellard.
“You really ought to see it. It’s too quaint. Really most amusing.’
The pink jumper now has half an invitation to add to her half-introduction. A note of still deeper reserve creeps into her voice.
‘I’m sure it must be delightful,’ she says.
‘Do you live round about?’ asks Reginald, feeling that he must say something.
‘Oh, no, I’m just down for the week-end.’
Good, then he needn’t see her again.
II
Even without the woman in the pink jumper there was plenty of life within the four stone walls of Westaways.
Bees.
Bees everywhere. Bees in the erigeron; well, you would expect them there. Bees in the eryngium—deceived by the name, perhaps. Was there ever more unpromising material? Bees going into the snap-dragons, and coming out backwards, a little annoyed. Bees on the zinnias, unaware of so much beauty, aware, only, of so much honey. A bee’s-eye view of a garden, how strange, how different! Food, food, no food, more food, less food. What a life! Bees in the lavender, looking for food.
Futile things, bees, thought Reginald. What are we in the world for? The creation of beauty, the discovery of beauty, the realization of beauty. What else? Well, knowledge, says that gargoyle Professor Pumpernickel. Very well; write ‘truth’ for ‘beauty’, if you will, and you have summed up the whole business of man. Are the bees for beauty, for truth? No. Just for existence. Existence, propagation, death, birth, existence, propagation, death, birth, existence, propagation, death . . . on and on through the centuries. Why this passion to reproduce oneself rather than to fulfil oneself? Not bees only; men and women. The birth-rate is going down! We are lost! What shall we do without children, more children, still more children, bungalows, more bungalows, still more bungalows? Here is a lovely corner of England, but there are no ugly little houses in it! Why aren’t we spreading? Why aren’t we having more and more families, so that we can keep on and on and on . . . reproducing?
I suppose, thought Reginald, we are afraid of ourselves. Like in that game we play at the Hildershams’ at Christmas—— Up Jenkins. All our hands busy
under the table passing the sixpence to each other, all of us trying to get the sixpence into somebody else’s hand, so that when the command ‘Up Jenkins!’ comes from across the table, it shall not be we who are responsible, not our hands which shall give away the secret. We have had the sixpence for a moment, we have passed it on successfully to little Tony Hildersham, we have done our part. If he is caught with it, that is his affair, if he has passed it on to the Coleby girl, that is her affair; our hands are clean.
So when we are asked ‘What did you do with life?’ we can answer quickly, ‘Passed it on, Lord.’
Was that to be Reginald’s answer? Well, he had not passed it on yet. He was not sure that he wanted to. He wanted Sylvia a wife, not a mother. But whether he did or not, it would not be his answer to the question, ‘What did you do with life?’ His answer would be, ‘Loved it terribly and was bewildered by it.’
Futile things bees, the worker bees. The drones had the best of it. At least they died for love. . . .
Butterflies.
Butterflies everywhere. Whites, Orange Tips, Brimstones, Tortoiseshells, Red Admirals, Peacocks, Painted Ladies, Walls, Blues, Heaths, Small Coppers, every sort of butterfly. Shadows of butterflies in the early sunshine swimming over the flowers. Peacocks on the buddleia . . . ten . . . twelve . . . and there a painted lady; peacocks folding their wings into blackness, opening them into beauty; red admirals on the buddleia, red and black velvet on lilac; brimstones delicately yellow, folding into a delicate green, with just a beauty-spot of orange put on with artistry by the mirror of the pool. Useless, beautiful butterflies—how much prouder God must be of you than of bees! How much more worth while to have made you!
Birds.
First the pigeons in the dovecot. Black Nuns. Black-and-White Nuns. Two of them, to begin with; nuns; undisturbed by men. They laid eggs, hopefully, but nothing happened. Perhaps, they told each other, it was the dovecot which was wrong; the aspect, the ventilation. They went to the roof and laid them hopefully there—facing north, facing south, on tiles, on stone. Still no babies. Pathetic. Then Reginald went to London to have his hair cut, and bought a Black Monk (and had his hair cut), and now it didn’t matter where the eggs were laid, dishevelled and surprised babies came out of them and grew to serenity. There were six; sitting lazily on the roof, making a lazy toilet by the pool, lovemaking lazily; happy, lazy, beautiful Nuns.
Then the mallards on the pond. To make them feel that they were no longer visitors, but part of the establishment, Reginald had given them an old dog-kennel to sleep in, nest in, meditate in. The duck retired within; meditated, slept on it, and decided to nest. Only two eggs were hatched. The drake, feeling, perhaps, that life was getting altogether too domestic, returned to his marsh in the woods; the dog-kennel was sent back to the barn; and three ducks settled down to a happy life on the pond, lived sometimes horizontally, sometimes vertically. ‘Look at that green on the back of the neck,’ thought Reginald reverently. ‘How does He do it?’
The kingfisher who flashed past them on his rare visits—ah, there was beauty! The white owl who came over in the dusk on some deep and secret business, as if holding his breath as he passed you, and then letting it out in one gentle expiration, more noiseless than silence. The call of the rooks in the elms on spring mornings, blackbirds in February, thrushes in April, the cuckoo who re-awakens in you the memory of every summer; the song of birds in early summer and then the strange silence of birds in late summer—could you ever forget that you shared the world with birds?
Goldfish in the pool, gold, black and gold, black and red, silver and gold. A strange, remote, sexless life they led. Breathing, thinking, breathing, thinking. Ascetics, living on nothing. Thinking, north and south; a turn of the tail, and they are thinking east and west. Waiting for something, some revelation, perhaps. Or was it ants’ eggs? Why ants’ eggs for goldfish? As well expect rabbits to like rooks’ eggs. Perhaps they do, thought Reginald, and wait hopefully at the bottom of trees. Sylvia looked beautiful, feeding the goldfish. Standing over the pool, another, more shadowy, Sylvia watching her, dropping in the food for them, or perhaps dropping in her silent thoughts, she also thinking, breathing, thinking, she, too, waiting for something, some revelation.
Cats. Three of them. Grandmamma, John Wesley and Marmalade. Poor Grandmamma was small and anxious, and would have been more anxious still if she had been a better arithmetician. ‘I thought I had seven children,’ she would say anxiously, ‘and I can only find one. Do you know where the other one is?’ Poor Grandmamma. There is no limit to the number of babies wanted, only to the number of kittens. John Wesley and Marmalade are the two Westaways survivors of twelve families in six years, but nobody can quite remember now whether they are brothers, half-brothers or uncle and nephew. John Wesley is long and black, and follows Reginald to heel, waiting for him to bend down to a weed. Then with a spring he is on his master’s shoulder, round his neck, content. Marmalade, Orange Marmalade, is more distant. Reginald can get very little out of him.
‘Hallo, Marmalade, where are you off to?’
‘A little private business, Mr. Wellard. An engagement in the fields, Mr. Wellard. Not unconnected with a mole, Mr. Wellard.’
‘Well, don’t bring the bag in here. I won’t have dead things left about the lawns. Do you understand?’
‘No, Mr. Wellard. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Wellard. See you again some time, if you’re still here.’ He steps on his way, dignified, unhurried.
‘Marmalade!’
Shall I look back? No. Not worth it.
‘Marmalade!’ This time in Sylvia’s voice. That’s another matter.
‘Yes, Mrs. Wellard?’
‘Mr. Wellard is talking to you.’
‘No birds, Marmalade. Remember. No birds allowed,’ says Reginald.
‘What is the man talking about?’ says Marmalade to Sylvia.
Sylvia laughs and says something to Reginald.
‘Good-bye, Marmalade,’ he calls out.
‘Good-bye, Mrs. Wellard,’ says Marmalade, and leaves them.
III
The weeks went by (nearly time for another hair-cut) and still Mrs. Baxter, Mrs. Hildersham and Mrs. Coleby were hopeful that some day, somehow, they would find themselves in possession of Bindweed.
Betty Baxter had been, it may be supposed, the most hopeful. She was in London now, save at week-ends, and there are undoubtedly shops in London. Possibly she had tried at the Court florist’s, the Court hairdresser’s and that delightful little place off the Brompton Road, unpatronized as yet by Royalty, where almost everything is hand-painted and amusing. Failing to get the book at any of these establishments, she may have lost heart. There were other shops, of course, but one simply couldn’t drive all over London until one came to the right one. And then the question may have come into her mind, ‘Does one buy books?’ Had any of her friends ever mentioned in her hearing as a fact of interest, or, in the case of one or two of them, of no possible interest whatever, that she had bought a book? ‘I picked up such a charming old decanter’: ‘I simply had to go in for a bead necklace’: these were commonplaces of conversation; but who had ever said, ‘I bought such a delightful book in that shop in Wigmore Street’? Nobody. And then there was another point. Since this was the only book one was likely to buy (if one did) one would have to pay cash for it. Would one not? And whoever heard of paying cash for anything?
Betty Baxter began to feel less hopeful. She was still, she told Sylvia, thrilled at the thought of reading it, but hadn’t managed to get hold of it just for the moment.
Grace Hildersham was also a little less hopeful than she had been, though not yet despairing. She had neither raspberries nor children on her hands at the moment, and was just in the mood for a lazy day with a nice novel. Finding herself in the village, she had wondered at the post office, which anyhow sold diaries, envelopes and china dogs, if they kne
w of a book called Woodbine. She was offered a packet of cigarettes which she accepted absently without prejudice to her original suggestion. A book. It was a book. Called Woodbine. However, it appeared that there was nothing in the shop more literary than a picture-postcard of Venus rising from the Brighton waves, and saying, with an economy of words and costume, ‘I am in the pink. How are you?’ Mrs. Hildersham rejected this with a large, pleasantly embarrassed smile, and went home again. Half-way up the hill she remembered that the book was called Bindweed, but it was evidently no use to go back. She must try again when next she was in Burdon.
Mrs. Coleby was the warmest of the three. She had joined the library at Burdon, had paid her tuppence (as Sylvia and she had assured each other, it was quite easy) and had taken out a book called By Order of the Czar. Tom Coleby was reading it now. Slowly.
So much for Sylvia’s friends. So much, it seemed, for Burdon and Little Malling. But no. There was one who had read it. Of all surprising people, old Mrs. Edwards.
Reginald and Edwards were looking at the snap-dragons in the nursery bed. Six hundred of them. Sown in boxes. Pricked out into other boxes. Transplanted to the nursery. Now to be transplanted into the real grown-up world in place of the tulips whose short day was done. Reginald glanced sideways at the enormous right hand of Edwards which was responsible for all this, and marvelled.
‘Make a fine show,’ said Edwards grudgingly.
‘If they’re the right colours.’
‘They’re all right. Look at ‘em.’
‘They all look healthy enough, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t want any of those pale yellow ones again. We said we’d stick to Fire King and Guardsman and——’
‘That’s what I said, look at ’em.’
Now then, thought Reginald, am I going to sack Edwards, or is he going to sack me?
‘Look at the stalk. See that? Red. There’s your Fire King. See that? Dark green. That means crimson. Now then, see that? Pale green, isn’t it? That means yellow. Only just those few of ‘em. Thought you’d like just a few. That’s why I said, look at ‘em.’
