Part 13 (1/2)
When we drove to the house which commanded ”one of the finest views in England”--home of the bride's sister--a rather less density of fog would have answered the purpose, instead of which we had rather more. The house, with its platform and all the lawns and flower-beds and marquees thereon, was quite plain to view; the first terrace was visible; some trees between that and the second tier of garden loomed a shade more substantial than their shadows would have been; below and beyond them--nothing. Nothing, nothing but cotton-wool, a white blanket, a wall impenetrable. Not a glimpse, not a hint of the coombe and sea that M.
had promised me. So that to this day I do not really know how lovely Devons.h.i.+re can be, although I can imagine that I know.
The visible house had the more attention paid to it, and within it there was much to charm the eye of a wedding guest, apart from the show of wedding presents. Our Norwegian hostess had brought to her English home treasure of furniture and curios that I had to apologise for staring at as if they were things in a museum; ma.s.ses of black wood carved all over, and strange pottery and metal ware, drinking-cups and the like; they brought the Norse country, ere while distant and practically unknown, to sight and touch, and set my unsated traveller's soul a-dreaming of snows and sagas, mountains and fjords.
But the Norwegian wedding-cake was the pride of its nation, amongst them all.
In the large marquee where the dinner-destroying marriage feast was spread, there were two of these nuptial trophies, an English cake crowning one long table, a Norwegian the other. The first was the white, three-tiered, much decorated affair that we are familiar with, and I did not go near it. The bride cut it ceremonially, and it was distributed in the usual way. Then, escorted by her bridegroom, she came across the carpeted tent through the smart crowd to where I stood at the other table. ”I must 'break' this cake,” she remarked, with her pretty foreign accent, and proceeded to do it with her two hands in what one perceived to be the correct Norwegian bridal fas.h.i.+on. In case the reader is as ignorant of the const.i.tution of Norwegian bridescakes as I was until that afternoon, I will try to describe it.
It may have stood two feet high, but obviously the size would depend on circ.u.mstances, the same as with our own. In shape it resembled the tall bottles, with their horizontal fluting, in which the ready-made salad-dressing of commerce is, or used to be, purveyed, being a sh.e.l.l formed of graduated rings of cake (much like the wooden rings for stretching drawn-thread-work), laid one upon another from bottom to top.
They were as perfectly round and evenly graduated as if the paste had been wound round a cone like cotton on a reel, but that is not how it was done, because each ring was complete in itself and came off whole when the cake was ”broken,” although previously it had adhered to the rings next to it strongly enough to make the finished erection safe to move and carry. This means, of course, that the stuff is not brittle, but neither is it tough; it bites like a particularly nice macaroon.
When the bride had pulled off the two or three top rings, which were broken into pieces of convenient size before being handed round, the hollow within revealed itself filled up with sweetmeats; and here again the purse or fancy would determine the kind and quality of sweetmeats used. A cake of any size, filled with the best ”lollies,” as we Australians call them, must be at least as costly as the corresponding English cake, although it may not look so. As it goes down, ring by ring, the miscellaneous internal goodies are distributed to keep the surface even, which certainly makes it the more interesting of the two to partake of; and it can a.s.suredly boast the more cunning cookery. I love a new experience, of whatever sort or kind, and I consider the Norwegian wedding-cake an item of value to my store.
Altogether, I had a good time that afternoon--as usual. Family guests allowed me not a moment to remember that I was a stranger, and I was thrown for a while with a lady--introduced to me with special intention as one who knew Australia--with whom I felt at once like an old friend, although she had known Australia only as a tourist, not as an old-timer like myself. We talked Australia and nothing else, but not quite as another lady, who knew Australia as I knew it, had discussed the subject with me at a Norfolk garden-party. We did not largely comment upon the funniness of these stay-at-home English people, the unconsciousness of the poor dears of how way back behind the times they were, and their extraordinarily mistaken notions about us and what we were accustomed to.
The fog had settled down for the remainder of the day, never having lifted since day broke. It took the bride and bridegroom and their carriage, swallowing them up before our eyes as we cl.u.s.tered about the porch to bid them G.o.dspeed. Soon afterwards we drove away ourselves. The hedgerow ivy and the foamy traveller's joy and the pink valerian were still to be seen on the roadside banks, so close to us as we pounded down the hills. The carriage windows were down, and the white veil floated about us. I watched the gradual wilting of the already discouraged feathers on the hat in front of me, until at last they hung down lank and s.h.i.+ny, little beads of moisture fringing their tips. I had tucked my own feather boa within my wraps, to save it, but when, reaching home, I drew it off in the hall, it was like drawing a wet sponge along my neck and cheek.
”Take them all to the drying-closet,” said M. to her maid. And there our wedding garments spent the night, coming forth dry and fuzzy in the morning.
In Australia the drying-closet is not amongst our domestic appliances, although its principles are applied to laundries. We do not need it. But it is the ”long-felt want” of every British home. Unfortunately it is the privilege of the well-to-do. Since I am not likely to be able to afford one, I intend not to wear feather boas when I go to live in England.
CHAPTER XV
IN THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND
Twenty years ago--or was it nearer twenty-five?--a dear girl came to live with me as governess-out-of-school to my young children and general aide-de-camp to myself. It was in the time, which spread over so many years, when I was not strong enough for all the domestic duties that properly belonged to me. I got her through an advertis.e.m.e.nt--the only time I was ever beholden to such a source for such an acquisition. ”A young English lady” was the attractive description of her--the very thing, to my mind, for my bush-bred infants.
I called on her at the Governesses' Home in Melbourne, and engaged her on the spot. She had come to Australia for her health, but if she told me so I did not grasp the fact; she looked as well and as good as I felt she would be comfortable to get on with. Also she had come from a good English house and a well-to-do and well-placed family, and was choosing to earn her living rather than be an expense to her father, from no compulsion but that of her own independent spirit; and this too was a fact I did not grasp. She never allowed me to perceive it. Had she been penniless, with only her casual employer to depend on, she could not have served me more devotedly. She worked far harder than I should have allowed her to do had I divined the secret weaknesses in her st.u.r.dy-looking little frame, always with bright face and cheerful voice and unslackening energy and interest. She seemed to have no thought for herself at all. And yet she professed, and still vehemently professes, that the time she spent with us was the time of her life.
However in the end she fell ill--very ill; then the secret weaknesses revealed themselves, and the doctor shook his head over them. We saw that governessing days were over, and her relatives were communicated with. Her father sent out money for her needs and for a first-cla.s.s pa.s.sage, and when she seemed able to travel we sent her back to him in the care of a trained nurse. The doctor thought she might live to reach her home, but he was not sanguine.
Well, she did, and is there still, bless her heart. At any rate I trust so, she was a few weeks ago. Although the secret weaknesses seem permanent and she risks her life every winter that she spends in England--unfortunately, the Riviera, subst.i.tute for the more beneficial and beloved Australia, is not always practicable--I antic.i.p.ate that she will be a hale old woman for many years after I am gone.
Through all the long interval between her parting with us at B---- and my meeting with her again, she kept up a loving correspondence, and every letter was a sigh for me to come home or a sigh to be back herself in the sunny land where she had been ”so well and happy.” I had not the leisure to answer half her letters, but when I was suddenly confronted with the opportunity of my life, and sat down to inform my English friends of the treat in store for them, it was with special satisfaction that I wrote to the one who, I knew, would hail the news with more genuine joy than anybody.
It was not until September that I found time to pay my first visit to her. She lived in Kent, not a hundred miles from Maidstone, to which town she journeyed to meet me--all in the wind and rain which were so bad for the secret weaknesses. Partridges being the only living creatures that my husband was then interested in--they had been available to the gun three days--I went alone. Later on, just before we sailed for home, I went down to her for a last week-end, and he followed to fetch me and to shake hands with her before we left.
On that 4th September when I met her first after the long absence a leading London newspaper made what now seems to me an astounding statement. It declared that ”we” had had ”the most depressing August ever known in England.” All I can say is (and I trust I am not giving a pair of rose-coloured spectacles away) that I have no recollection of the circ.u.mstance. It was not a depressing August to me--I can swear to that--and newspapers are notoriously sensational. ”Ever known in England” is absurd on the face of it, as the utterance of a probably young man, and certainly of a man whose memory would not reach even as far as the Coronation of Queen Victoria. But I do remember, and frankly admit, that it was a wet day when I went to Kent for the first time. Not only wet, but cold.
But that only made the home-coming to C.'s hearth and heart the warmer.
Warm I knew it would be, but even the loving correspondence, undiscouraged by its frequent onesidedness, had not prepared me for the discovery I made of my peculiar and permanent place in her regard. Of the many happy experiences of life, few can match that of finding you have been one of the deities of a faithful heart for over twenty years of absence without knowing it. But that was only one of the surprises of the day. Having stupidly missed the significance of first-cla.s.s pa.s.sages and frequent Riviera winters, I had supposed myself bound for the sort of home that you a.s.sume your nursery governess comes from, whereas I arrived at a good country house, with fifty acres of estate to it, the property of her family for generations, and now belonging to her and three sisters jointly; an unpretentious establishment certainly, but handsomely appointed and correctly administered--not like the bush parsonage into which she had fitted herself so una.s.sumingly. When packing in the morning I had rejoiced in the innocence of my heart that, for once, I need not bother myself with a lot of luggage; and I took for my week-end a bag which at a pinch I could have carried in my own hand.
When evening came, and a bare-armed and bare-shouldered guest to meet me, and I had nothing but a short cloth skirt and a high-necked blouse to make a toilet of, I thought of something that an experienced globetrotter, fresh from the West African wilds, had once told me. ”One thing I have found,” said he: ”wherever you go, if you haven't been there before,” and he was speaking of the least likely places, ”it is never safe to go without your evening clothes.” I shall not forget that in future. The irony of fate was in it when C. offered me a black satin dinner-gown of her own. Sad--indeed, wild--as I was to be the one to seem to show disrespect to her house, it was something of a comfort to me to find that I had grown so fat in England (from seven stone five on landing to eight stone two the day before this day) that I could not make it meet by inches. I would sooner go to dinner in my petticoat than wear a st.i.tch of anybody else's--even hers, like a daughter as she was; but I could not damp her loving solicitude by saying so.
She heaped luxuries upon me, even luxuries that she could not afford (because I know just how far a quarter of the income of even a nice estate as this was, in the chronic bad times of British agriculture, would go, and that she supplemented it by selling plants from her garden, and sometimes in other ways). When, after our great gossip over our tea by the drawing-room fire, I went upstairs to make bricks without straw, as it were, in my preparation for dinner, I found my pretty bedroom, in which the fine old mahogany shone like gla.s.s, exhaling her thoughtfulness all over it. In Australia, where your friends' buggies are also their luggage carts, and where railway porters are so precarious, you get into the habit of reducing your travelling kit to the minimum, and a bulky dressing-gown is one of the things that can be done without for a day or two, if you have an overcoat with you. I had left mine behind, and lo! there hung from a chair by my warm fireside a gorgeous robe of silk, embroidered outside, padded within, and beside it a pair of quilted satin shoes to match--to go to my bath with, although a.s.suredly not meant for such humble use. That was the sort of thing.
When a carriage was had all the way from Maidstone, and kept with no regard for the expense of wasted hours, I used the privilege of an old friend and mother to remonstrate with her.
”Oh, _don't_!” her face and voice checked me from doing it again. ”If you only _knew_ what this is to me!” Well, I did know, and it was knowledge to make one bless one's luck. How little we are aware of it when we are setting bread upon the waters! I had been absolutely unconscious of responsibility for this which came back to me after so many years.