For months we have clean forgotten that the living-room window requires two thumps if it is to be got open; yet without a moment’s hesitation Ursula pulls off her gloves the moment we enter the door, makes straight for the window, and gives it the requisite couple of vigorous bangs, so as to let in the evening scent of the honeysuckle that is thick about the porch. For months, it may be, we have forgotten entirely that the lid of the biggest brown teapot has a knack of tumbling off into the teacup, unless it is held on while one pours. And yet, the moment I take up that teapot again, instinctively my hand grips the lid.
There is an indefinable spirit of welcome in all these little familiar things—so commonplace and feeble and stupid they would seem to outsiders; yet to us they imply that “we belong.” It is part of the all-pervading rest that we find among these hills, that we go on from just where we left off last time. We don’t have to start afresh, or get acquainted with the place, or learn anything new. There is a great charm in returning to familiar scenes that is missed by those who are always rushing off on some new quest. True, they may find interest in another direction; but I think with most of us—excepting when we are very young and very inexperienced—the homing instinct is strong.
I have laid my battered brain on pillows in some of the largest hotels in the world; but I have never known in any of them the peaceful rest that is to be found in the cottage bedroom, despite its sloping roof. I’m not saying that there is nothing whatever to disturb one there—all too often Mr. and Mrs. Starling (several of them) persist in building under the tiles just above my head, and the various families demand breakfast at 3.30. Yet I even get to sleep through this.
There is one thing, however, that always wakes me and calls me in a most peremptory manner to get up, and that is the return of the swallows one morning in April or May, when the sites are being chosen for the new nests under the eaves. It is such a sweet little chatter, such a bubbling over of comment and advice and reminiscence, as they get their first beakful of mud, and start to lay the foundation-stone of the nest.
What do they say? I often wonder. They seem to talk the whole time, and explain to each other the excellent residential qualities of their various positions. One thing I am sure they say—and they twitter it over and over again—I know they mean it, though I don’t understand their language; for the homing instinct is strong in them, as it is in all of Nature’s children; and as I listen to them in the early morning, I can almost hear their words, “Isn’t it good to be here again?”
III
At the Sign of the Rosemary Bush
When the cottage was originally built—about one hundred and thirty years ago—it was probably just two rooms upstairs, one going out of the other, and a kitchen and scullery downstairs. In the intervening years, however, one owner has added on a couple of rooms on one side, and another has put on two more and a pantry round the corner, and so on, till it is difficult to say exactly what type of dwelling it really is.
There is a proper front door somewhere about the place, only no one ever seems to find it; the path leading to it from the main gate unobtrusively hides itself among the fir-trees, wandering round at the rear of the house, and under some low apple-trees—of course, no one who wasn’t familiar with the geography of the estate would think of exploring such an out-of-the-way, narrow, grass-grown trail. No, they would naturally follow along the irregularly-flagged broad path that is kept by the handy man fairly free from weeds (except some little ferns that will peep up at the edge, no matter what he does to them, and a saucy white violet that has planted itself right in the very middle of the walk and blooms vigorously).
Along this path most people go, whether they carry their best sunshade, a bead bag and a silver card-case, or are merely delivering two half-pounds of butter done up in dock leaves, and a cream-coloured duck wrapped up in a coarse white tea-cloth with his liver tucked under his wing, a big bunch of fresh sage stuck in his mouth—“and, please, mother’s put in a couple o’ onions in case you didn’t happen to have none.”
This broad path leads to a corner in the architectural conglomeration where there are two doors at right angles—one moderately respectable and one smaller and shabbier. If you carry a silver card-case, you knock at the respectable-looking door—which promptly admits you into the scullery: if you are merely someone anxious to dispose of a few eggs or wanting to borrow a little flour, you knock more humbly at the shabby door—to find you are battering at the coal-house.
Abigail deals with callers according to their status: the silver card-cases are invited, in dulcet tones, to retrace their steps along the broad path and take the narrow one to the front door. Sometimes they do exactly as they are told; but more often, alas! they espy yet another door, which they promptly make for, and this one precipitates them right into the living-room and on top of me, no matter what I may be doing.
Inside the cottage it is a similar jumble. You think you have found the living-room all right, when you come in from the garden, only to pull up in a large pantry, like a small room, with shelves full of delicious mysteries in glass jars and jampots and pickle bottles.
You open a door in the living-room, thinking it is the one leading out into the back hall, to find yourself confronted with a very steep and narrow stone staircase, which is one way of getting upstairs! Of course you get used to it all in a few days, and eventually cease to tumble down over the odd step that is obligingly placed here and there in dark spots, wherever the floor level changes in the halls or landings. But to those who are not native-born it is a wee bit confusing at first.
The living-room was originally the kitchen. It has a large fireplace with an oven, and wide hobs whereon you can stand a kettle or anything else you want to keep hot. It has a crane, too—only we daren’t cook our dinner in a pot suspended from it, because I don’t want Abigail to give notice. We have therefore to content ourselves with giving the crane an occasional swing.
The mantelpiece—of oak that is black with age—has two shelves, the upper one projecting beyond the lower, which has a frill of chintz beneath. Higher up still there is an ancient rack for holding a couple of guns, and there are cupboards on each side, also of black oak, that must have been put there when the house was built.
But I think the thing that delights my heart above everything else in this room is the huge dresser.
When you start with a room like this—I forgot to mention that there are oak rafters, with hooks for home-fed hams—it is easy to make it cosy. The big wooden settle keeps off draughts, some chairs that belonged to my great-grandparents are far more comfortable than anything I could buy nowadays, with the wood worn to that smooth polish that can only be attained by generations of handling.
The oak dower chest is heavily carved, though its iron hinges and locks suggest a prison door for solidity and size; still it is a handy receptacle for the miscellaneous collection of MSS. and papers that haunts me wherever I go!
I do not expect everybody to admire this style of room. There was one caller (who came out of sheer curiosity) who, after gazing around the living-room, with manifest disapproval, at last said, “You really could make this into quite a nice little drawing-room if you had those old rafters and beams done away with, and a proper ceiling put. Then you could easily have a nice tiled modern stove in place of that dreadfully old-fashioned fireplace, with those great hobs. And if you moved the dresser into the kitchen, and——” So she went on, winding up with the encouraging assurance, “And you would hardly know the place when you had got it all done.”
With one voice we said we could quite believe it.
People so often fail to realise that both a country cottage decked out in imitation of a town villa, and a