Spring in a Shropshire Abbey

Old Shropshire folks still repeat to their grandchildren, when they see a carrion crow —

“Dead ’orse, dead ’orse,Where? Where?Prolly Moor. Prolly Moor.We’ll come, we’ll come.There’s nought but bones.”

In old days, Shropshire children used to imagine that carrion crows flew off at night to Prolly Moor, there to roost. Prolly Moor is a great tract of wild land that lies at the foot of the Longmynd, and is said to be the sleeping-ground of crows and the place where witches hold midnight revels. I kept my eyes on the bird, and saw him sail away, skirting in his flight the old town, and at last I noted that he flew over the top of the Edge, at the back of Wenlock Town.

LIFE IS A DREAM

As I retraced my steps homewards, I was greeted by the soft music of the chimes. How prettily they sounded across the meadows; “Life is a dream, life is a dream,” they seemed to say; yet for all their dreamy sound I remembered that they are calling out the hour of nine, and in spite of the joy of spring, the cry of birds, and the charm of beast and flower, I hurried up the stairs to the east garden and regained the house.

On the threshold of the east entrance to the Abbey I met Bess.

“Mama,” she said reprovingly, “where have you been? Your breakfast is getting cold, and it is to-day, to-day I tell you.”

The last part of Bess’s speech referred to the gift – the present of all the presents, as my little girl called it – which was to arrive; in other words, to the pug puppy.

“Listen, mama,” she cried, “it is to come by the train this afternoon; and Mamie has sent me a ribbon, all blue,” and my little girl showed me a ribbon and a letter announcing the fact in a childish round hand. “Pups,” continued Bess, gravely, “cannot be dressed in anything but blue. Then there is the day-bed to discuss, his saucer and his supper plate – mamsie, there is a great deal to do,” and Bess hurried me upstairs to see the preparations.

We found together a white saucer, and Bess looked forward to washing it. But Nan said severely, “Best let Liza, she understands such things.” And I feared, from the pursed-down corners of Nan’s mouth, poor master pug would get but a scant welcome. Bess noticed the expression on old Nana’s face and whispered, “Specs God never gave Nan a dog-brother in all her life.” Nan sat on stitching as if nothing could move her from her seat, as she always does in moments of irritation, and I must agree with Bess, that she was neither kind nor helpful in her preparations for the arrival of Prince Charming, as we christened our expected visitor.

As we left the room, Nan lifted her eyes from her work, and said severely, “Might be a baby, I’m sure.” We both felt rather chilled at this, and Bess took my hand, and, while she jumped down two steps at a time, asked if I didn’t think my own bedroom would be better for the Prince than hers.

“One dog more, mamsie,” she urged, “couldn’t make much difference. Where there’s place for Mouse, mams, I am sure there is place for a pup.”

“But supposing Mouse objected?” I said. “What a big mouth she has, and what sharp teeth, and what a poor little thing the Prince would be in her jaws! Besides,” I asserted, “I must introduce them carefully; what if our old friend should be jealous or ‘unsympathetic’ like another old friend?”

“Whatever Mouse may be, she can never,” declared Bess, “be real cross, like a real live woman. Dogs aren’t made that way.” And so that part of the subject dropped.

PRINCE CHARMING IS COME

I went down to breakfast, and Bess sat by me talking twelve by the dozen; her whole soul was engrossed as to where the Prince’s day-basket was to be kept, and whether the miniature blanket was to be tucked round his infinitesimal serene highness – or not.

As I got up from my breakfast, I saw to my dismay that the post had brought me, what a friend calls, “an avenging pile of letters.” How many hours’ writing they meant, and other people’s work! Bess standing by cried, “I wish they were all mine, I never get letters except on my birthday, and at Christmas.”

“And never have to answer them,” I said. “Ah, my dear, when one grows up, letters mean other things besides invitations and presents. They can mean requests, bothers, worries, other people’s work – and are always sharp scissors for cutting up leisure, and preventing happy hours in the garden or with one’s embroidery.”

“I shouldn’t have them, then,” retorted Bess, stolidly.

“What would you do?”

“Burn them and see what happened.”

I looked at Bess and laughed. After all, the idea may be more “Philosophe qu’on ne pense.” But I was not strong enough to carry her suggestion into action, so I kissed Bess, told her I could not carry out her plan, and said I must write all the morning, but hoped by industry to save the afternoon for myself, and to spend it as I wished.

At last all the letters were answered – invitations, requests, permissions, “characters,” money sent to charities, and a great packet was assembled in the letter-box – then when the last was finished, I called to Mouse, and we wandered out together into the garden.

I felt that I had earned the pleasure of a free time amid my birds and flowers. I walked along the kitchen garden path and paused to enjoy that most excellent and wholesome of all good smells, the odour of newly upturned earth.

To the south is a hedge of thorn some four feet high, and facing the same direction is a high wall where apricots, peaches and pears are trained.

The pears were all in blossom in dense sheets of snow, and only tips of green were visible here and there. To save the blooms from the frost, Burbidge had put some tiffany in front of the trees, and fixed down the coarse muslin-like stuff by laths of wood. There were also cordons of pears running athwart the wall, and over these to protect them he had put fir branches. These pears are of the magnificent early dessert sorts such as Clapp’s Favourite, Williams’ Bon Chrétien, Souvenir de Congrès, and beside these we have the earliest variety of all, the delicious little Citron des Carmês, which often yields a dish of pears the first week in August, before, so to speak, one has begun to realize that summer is fleeting.

On entering our little kitchen garden, there is a hedge of roses on each side trained against some iron rails. On one side ramps the delightful Gloire de Dijon roses with all its many tinted blossoms of orange, creamy white, and buff shades; on the other, is a hedge of the superb old General Jacqueminot. The General is a magnificent summer blossomer, he flowers in June even in Shropshire, and his flowers are of the richest, fullest, crimson, and of delicious sweetness – not as large as many of the new hybrid perpetual sorts, but General Jacqueminot’s rich red is of extreme beauty, and whatsoever the season he always blossoms, and the scent is one of the sweetest known. Then I paused to stop at my bed of Ranunculi, a flower which once was held in great favour by English gardeners, but which now seldom finds a place in English parterres. Nothing could be seen but a few little curly leaves like sprouting parsley, but later I hoped for and expected a glory of colour. I grow all colours, crimson, vermilion, salmon, pink, fawn, cherry and black, and some are of the darkest shade of sumptuous orange.

THE VISIT TO CLUN

These flowers are often found in old Italian Church work, and I have read they were brought to Venice by the Moors, and so introduced into Italy. I found Burbidge waiting for me as I came up to him. He said he was pleased to see me. I had not seen the old man in the garden for some weeks. He had been ill since his visit to Clun, and I had only seen him in bed, and then in the presence of his old wife Hester – an austere middle-aged woman “given to chapel ways,” as Burbidge expresses it, so I had heard nothing fresh of Benjamin or of his granddaughter Sal. After we had settled the kinds of dahlias, and how best to sow the sweet-peas, which last were to be sown in separate groups in lines, I called my old gardener aside, away from “his boys” as he calls them, although Roderick Pugh and Absolom Preece are middle-aged men, and asked him in a whisper about his visit to Clun.

“Was your brother better?” I asked. “Anyway, tell me about them all.”

“Dahlias first,” said Burbidge shortly, and touched his hat. And I felt there was not a moment to be wasted, so we looked out a plot of ground that was suitable to receive all the tubers, and then at last I got him away, and to speak about his visit to his brother.

Poor Sal —

At first my old friend would not answer my questions, and only looked grave, and shook his head. But at last he yielded to my entreaties, and after calling out to his boys to attend to their business and to do some “job” in the far distance, he followed me into a secluded path.

“I would not for ever so much as them boys should hear,” he began. “It might clean scare they, and make ’em feckless about their spring digging and fettling; but as yer have asked me, I’ll make a clean breast of the business. I looked in at the show, but,” Burbidge declared scornfully, “it warn’t nothing better than I’ve seen scores of times in my own apple-room; and as to the crocuses, hellebores and scillas, they wern’t nothing but what us has, and better.”

My old friend always enjoys speaking disparagingly of shows and exhibitions, whatever he really thinks, for even gardeners are not without some particle of envy, I shrewdly suspect.

“Well,” continued Burbidge, “after business,” and I knew business meant something connected with the garden, “I went on to Clun, and there was a deal of getting to get to Clun – stopping, waiting, and misinforming, but at last the job got done. When yer wants, yer gets, as Humphrey Kynaston said when he made the leap.”

“Yes, Burbidge, but how about your brother?” I said, trying to make him keep to his point.

“I found him and Sal,” answered Burbidge, “strange as bats in sunlight. They were both overlooked, sure enough. Dazed and dimmy, same as if they had been bashed and bummelled for a whole live-long week.”

“What did you do?” I inquired.

I KNOW OF A CHARM

“I just spoke,” was his reply. “But I couldn’t get no answer. One and t’other, they looked like cats as had been fair nicked by a blacksmith’s dog, and they youped and trembled whensoever I spoke – and wouldn’t answer, more than bats in a rick-yard. As to Sal, I couldn’t get nothing out of she, save that a white dove had flown again her bedroom winder, and had called out, ‘Come, spirit, come;’ and as to brother Benjamin, he nodded and spoke Dutch, he war that mazed and foolish, and while he war taking on like, who should step inside but his son Frank. And Frank he come in bold as a lion, and trim as a dandy with a bobbish tie, and he said, ‘Here be Malachi, him as was born under this roof when my missus war took worse all of a sudden. He be a tall young fellow, hale, hearty, and fresh as a May sprig. He have joined the volunteers, and has at home his uniform, which be next best to a general’s.’ And when brother Ben heard him, he fair burst out in a rage. ‘What matters it,’ he saith, ‘what generals, or kings, or thy sons clothe themselves in, or who has beef or beer when I sits in mortal fear;’ and he shivered and quailed same as a poor body in a Poorhouse as hasn’t nought of his own, not so much as his own pipe or the shirt to his back. And while father and son were talking, Malachi he comed up, and he said, smiling like an April day, ‘Never you fear, grandad, for all I’m young, I know of a charm as ’ull free you from all her hanky-panky ways.’ And then, without a word from his grandad, he kind of touched his stick as if he war touchin’ a pretty wench as he war keeping company with, and he started whistlin’ an old tune, and he called out over his shoulder, ‘I’ll cure ye,’ and laughed as one who has a joke all to hisself, and so out went Malachi.

“Then there was quiet for a bit, and I heard naught but a crying of the wind outside; but suddenly voices got introduced, and we heard a crying and a calling and a scuffling in the garden, or thereabouts, loud as the cry of the Seven Whistlers; and I sat quiet till I could stand no more, then I peered out, and there, sure enough, war Malachi and the witch.

“And Malachi, he called out, ‘Down on yer knees, yer old hathan, or I’ll beat yer – old witch as yer call yerself – black and blue if yer don’t stir yer old tongue and say arter me, “I hain’t got no magic, nor no charms neither, I be a born fool, and I swear I’ll leave Benjamin Burbidge and his granddaughter for ever more alone.”’

“And the witch,” continued old Thomas, “her did swear it. ‘So help me God, I will,’ her cried out; and her spoke as true as Gospel truth, for I think her meant it, for as Malachi said, ’tis wonderful, even with a witch, the magic of a stout ash-plant.”

Burbidge’s words still rung in my ears when running up the garden path I saw my little maiden approaching me.

“We shall be late,” she cried excitedly, “if you don’t come at once – at once, I say. And think what a terrible thing it would be to keep Prince Charming waiting.”

I nodded to Burbidge and started off with Bess at a brisk trot up the front drive, mounted the field that led to the station, and waited panting on the platform for the little dog.

To my surprise Bess had a cloak on her arm.

“You are not cold, child?” I asked.

“No, no, mum; but what if the pug was to catch cold?”

“We must hope not, for that would be a calamity,” I answered.

Bess skipped and danced up and down, clinging to my hand, jumping and swaying backwards and forwards, as if her little body were made of quicksilver. Then, after a while, she suddenly fell into a reflective mood, and asked what are the best ways of forgetting that you are waiting?

“To think of something else, or not to want so badly,” I answered.

“I couldn’t do that,” answered Bess, gravely, “because I shouldn’t be me if I did, and he couldn’t be Prince Charming if I didn’t want him. I feel,” she gasped, “as if I just want, want till I am dying of wanting.”

I looked at my little girl. “Suppose he didn’t come by this train, what would you do then?”

“I don’t know. Go to bed, I think, and cry.”

THE PRINCE ARRIVES

But happily there was no need of so sad an ending to a bright spring day, for as I spoke the train rushed in. The porter hurried forward, and there was a general commotion. Two passengers got out, a couple of old fowls were removed, and a second later, a little basket also was taken out of the luggage-van.

“Shall I have this sent to the Abbey?” inquired the station-master.

But Bess would not hear of so slow a manner of getting the pug-puppy down. In delirious joy the little mantle was flung on the ground and her arms were tightly clasped round the basket. When one has been sent a pug-pup there is only one place to go to – home.

So I picked up the mantle, and Bess, bearing her cherished possession, led the way.

Then there was tea, which, as we have no bells, Bess saw to herself.

I heard her in the passage giving a hundred contradictory orders. It is to come at once, and then, there’s to be broth for the puppy and cakes, “sponge and the other, and meat,” and at last she returned breathless to me.

“I have ordered everything,” she cried, and took the little dog off my knee. It was a sweet little baby dog with a crinkly-crankly black phiz and dear little blinking, cloudy blue eyes. The ribbon that was sent to adorn his neck was much too big to fasten round his throat, but he looked contented and rested drowsily under Bess’s continued protestations of affection.

After tea we sat on before the chapel hall fire.

“I thought last Christmas,” said Bess, “when I had the white bride doll, that I never should want nothing no more. But now that I have the pug Prince, I know I shall never want anything again, not if I live to be a hundred.”

“Wait till the next time,” I laughed. At that moment I heard a scratching at the study door, which opens upon the chapel hall. I opened it and took Mouse gently by the collar.

“Bess,” I said, while I held on tightly, “the introduction must be made, but with tact,” and I and Mouse returned together.

I put the puppy on the rug. Mouse looked at it sadly and then walked severely away.

“Why does she behave like that?” asked Bess. “See, Mouse is whining and wants to go out.”

“She is jealous,” I said.

“Why should she mind?”

“Think, Bess,” I replied, “what would you say if there came here a new baby, a new helpless little thing. Might it not be just a little bit of a trial to you, don’t you think, when you saw all the world running about to welcome it, cake, tea, milk, cream, all ordered for it at once? We none of us like being put in the shade, not even Mouse.”

Bess looked at me, and then putting the pug down, she cast her arms effusively round the great hound’s neck.

“You must forgive my little pup,” she said coaxingly, “and not hate presents, even if they are for other people,” and a shower of kisses followed.

Mouse was mollified; she looked at me gravely. He has not the first place, she seemed to say, and she came and laid her great head solemnly on my knees.

“She knows,” said Bess, “that not even Prince Charming can put her nose out of joint.”

Mouse watched the little pug out of the corner of her eye, but with more sadness than malice. Bess fed her with slices of cake, whilst the pug approached her future gigantic companion.

“All friends now,” Bess whispered. “Nobody now to get nice but Nana; but nurses always take longer to forgive than dogs.”

NANA IS KIND

In the evening I stole upstairs and found Prince Charming sleeping in his little basket by Bess’s bed. Apparently old Nana had yielded to his charms, or else was reconciled to his having a nursery existence.

She got up from her sewing and said with a smile on her good old face, “Bless her little heart, how it do please her, the pup; but then she must have what she has a mind to.”

After this, I had a quiet hour with my books, and I took down for the last half-hour a volume of Montaigne. What delightful company he is, always bright and cheery, full of knowledge, and yet always so human. I came to the passage which Madame de Sévigné always said brought tears to her eyes. I refer to the “affection of the Mareschal de Montluc for his son who died in the island of Madeira.”

“My poor boy,” wrote the Mareschal, “never saw me with other than a stern and disdainful countenance, and now he is gone in the belief that I neither knew how to love him, nor esteemed him according to his deserts,” and the remorse and pity of it all. In the silence of the night it all came home to me. What a touching picture it is, the reserved old man with no word of love on his tongue, and yet his heart full of affection. “For whom,” cries the grief-stricken old man, “did I reserve the discovery of that singular affection that I had for him in my soul?” What a pathetic tale it is, one of Montaigne’s many. What a homely tongue the great essayist has, and yet what a wise one – possessing, as he does, the art of telling us all the old tales of Greece and Rome clothed in summer verdure, so that the leaves of his discourse never grow stale or faded. He makes the ancient world live again, and gives men and women who lived and died hundreds of years before he was born new life and beauty.

“Oh, do not let us love in vain. Let us find out our love before the wave has gone over the dear one’s head,” is what I seemed to hear. “Do not let our lips call in the coming time, ‘Lord, too late, too late!’”

I thought of little Bess, the happy owner of her dog, and I said, at least, Lord, my little maid will look back on her childhood, I hope, as a happy, happy time, a time of flowers, and joyous play. Bad times must come, but let me be a happy parent in that I have given my child no more unhappy time than I could help!

The next morning. I sauntered off into the garden. There were the gladioli to plant, so that they might blossom well before the autumn frosts.

FLOWERS IN A GARDEN

First of all, come the beautiful early summer sorts such as the delicate Bride, Leonora, Mathilde, and Colvilli, and then in autumn the brilliant Brenchleyensis, Gandavensis, and exquisite soft tinted Lemoinei. Burbidge has a pocket-book in which the date of all plantings as well as sowings are registered. “Them gladiolouses,” as he calls them, “war put in the 4th of March last year, so they this year must be put in their places without delay in the red-walled garden to enliven the borders, and there must be a large patch in the kitchen garden for pulling” (picking), for Burbidge, in common with most gardeners, cannot bear picking his blossoms in the real flower garden. Blows for the garden is the old man’s constant adage, and he will sometimes say sourly, “What for do ladies want their places littered about with jars and tubs and what not, same as if their chambers was fresh-blown meads? Let ’em be, say I, where the hand of the Lord hath put ’em.” And he will add, “growing blows is right, ’cause it is in the way of nature, but I don’t hold to parlour bowers. They be unwholesome, not to say a bit retchy.” I am inclined to agree with my old friend in some of his strictures about the modern drawing-room, for a room laden with scents, and that has closed windows, is certainly a productive source of headaches.

As I stood by the garden watching Burbidge and his men plant the gladioli, a little figure dashed up to me. “Mama,” cried Bess, in a state of wild excitement, “they’ve come, two real princes, I really do believe.”

I was puzzled for a moment, but at last I stammered out, “Where? Where?”

“At the pond, at the pond,” exclaimed Bess, trembling with delight.

I could not get anything more out of Bess, but Burbidge, hearing her mention the pond, hobbled up.

“Bless her little heart!” he said, “the little lady means the swans.”

And in answer to my inquiry, “What swans?” he answered —

“Didn’t yer hear, mam, about the great birds? No?” Then he went on to tell me how, in the early morning, when he and the under-gardeners “war fettling up on the east side between six and seven, us suddenly heard a kind of unearthly crying, like some one moaning and sobbing, and whispering right up aloft. And then,” continued my old friend, “I seed such a sight as I’ve never seen afore. Fowls as big as chest o’ drawers flyin’ round and round. They came on flying in great circles, as if they couldn’t stop, till down they flumped like a couple of cannon balls, and struck slap into the great Abbey pool.

“I did,” pursued Burbidge, “tell Miss Célestine later to let yer know, seeing as you be interested in all fur and fluff, birds and insects, and most varmint, but her have no sense, save for frills and furbelows.”

On hearing of the arrival of the swans, I seized hold of Bess’s hand, and off we went together to welcome our new visitors.

They were beautiful white birds of spotless plumage, probably driven from the lake of Willey, or from further off, by the cruelty of their parents. For old swans become terribly fierce as the nesting season comes on, and will not even allow the offspring of a past spring to remain on their own waters.

“How lovely they are,” said Bess, enthusiastically. “It is a real fairy-story, mamsie, this time.”

MOUSE FEEDS ON BREAD

Then we returned to the Abbey, and brought out a basket of broken scraps. Bess threw some pieces into the water, and the swans stooped down their beautiful graceful necks and fed with avidity. Bess watched them intently, whilst Mouse, who had followed us too, looked on superciliously; and then, with great greediness, ate all the bread that she could reach, so that, as Bess said, “too much food should not be wasted on mere swans.”

“Isn’t she greedy?” cried Bess. “At home she hardly eats even cake!”

Poor old Mouse! She is made up of unamiable vices, excepting to us. Then Nana appeared, and declared crossly that my little girl would catch her death of cold standing on the damp grass by the water.

Bess fired up at this and retorted, “As if, Nana, people ever catch cold when they watch swans. Why, my mother watches birds hundreds of hours, and she never catches cold.”

But, in spite of Bess’s protestations, my little maid was carried off by Nan, who, I heard, afterwards went off to the post-office to get a postal order.

When Bess returned from her short turn, I noticed that she was grave and silent, and not at all the usual bouncing Bess of Wenlock, as we are wont to call her. I mentioned that I was going for a longer walk, in search of white violets, and begged her to come with me, if she was not too tired, and bring a basket in case we found any.