Spring in a Shropshire Abbey

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.