I
Ten minutes late, in the hot evening sunshine, my train bustled contentedly along between orchards and hop gardens, jolted past the signal-box, puffed importantly under the bridge, and slowed up at Baldock Wood. The station was exactly the same as usual and I was very pleased to see it again. I was back from Ballboro’ for the summer holidays. As I was going forward to the guard’s van to identify my trunk and my wooden play-box, the stationmaster (who, in those days, wore a top-hat and a baggy black frock-coat) saluted me respectfully. Aunt Evelyn always sent him a turkey at Christmas.
Having claimed my luggage I crossed the bridge, surrendered my ticket to a red-nosed and bearded collector, who greeted me good-naturedly, and emerged from the station with my cricket-bat (which was wrapped in my cricket-pads) under my arm. Dixon was waiting outside with a smart pony and trap. Grinning at me with restrained delight, he instructed my luggage-trundling porter to put it on the village omnibus and I gave the man the last sixpence of my journey-money. As we rattled up the road the unpunctual train with a series of snorts and a streamer of smoke sauntered sedately away into the calm agricultural valley of its vocation.
How jolly to be home for the holidays, I thought to myself. So far neither of us had said a word; but as soon as we were out of the village street (it wasn’t our own village) he gave the pony a playful flick of the whip and made the following remark: “I’ve got a place for you in tomorrow’s team.” Subdued triumph was in his voice and his face.
“What, for the Flower Show Match!” I exclaimed, scarcely able to believe my ears. He nodded.
Now the Flower Show Match was the match of the year, and to play in it for the first time in my life was an outstanding event: words were inadequate. We mutually decided not to gush about it.
“Of course, you’re playing too?” I inquired. He nodded again. Dixon was one of the mainstays of the village team—a dashing left-hand bat and a steady right-arm bowler. I drew a deep breath of our local air. I was indeed home for the holidays! Expert discussion of tomorrow’s prospects occupied the remaining mile and a half to the house.
“Miss Sherston won’t half be pleased to see you,” he said as we turned briskly in at the white gate. “She misses you no end, sir.”
Aunt Evelyn had heard us coming up the drive, and she hurried across the lawn in her white dress. Her exuberant welcome ended with—“But you’re looking rather thin in the face, dear. … Don’t you think Master George is looking rather thin, Dixon? … We must feed him up well before he goes back.” Dixon smiled and led the pony and cart round to the stable-yard.
“And now, dear, whatever do you think has happened? I’ve been asked to help judge the vegetables at the Flower Show tomorrow. Really, I feel quite nervous! I’ve never judged anything except the sweet peas before. Of course, I’m doing them as well.” With great restraint I said that I was sure the vegetables would be very interesting and difficult.
“I’m playing in the match,” I added, with casual intensity. Aunt Evelyn was overjoyed at the news, and she pretended to be astonished. No doubt she had known about it all the time. The roast chicken at dinner tasted delicious and my bed felt ever so much more comfortable than the one at school.
My window was wide open when I went to bed, and I had left the curtains half-drawn. I woke out of my deep and dreamless sleep to a gradual recognition that I was at home and not in the cubicled dormitory at Ballboro’. Drowsily grateful for this, I lay and listened. A cock was crowing from a neighbouring farm; his shrill challenge was faintly echoed by another cock a long way off.
I loved the early morning; it was luxurious to lie there, half-awake, and half-aware that there was a pleasantly eventful day in front of me. … Presently I would get up and lean on the window-ledge to see what was happening in the world outside. … There was a starling’s nest under the window where the jasmine grew thickest, and all of a sudden I heard one of the birds dart away with a soft flurry of wings. Hearing it go, I imagined how it would fly boldly across the garden: soon I was up and staring at the treetops which loomed motionless against a flushed and brightening sky. Slipping into some clothes I opened my door very quietly and tiptoed along the passage and down the stairs. There was no sound except the first chirping of the sparrows in the ivy. I felt as if I had changed since the Easter holidays. The drawing-room door creaked as I went softly in and crept across the beeswaxed parquet floor. Last night’s half-consumed candles and the cat’s half-empty bowl of milk under the gate-legged table seemed to belong neither here nor there, and my own silent face looked queerly at me out of the mirror. And there was the familiar photograph of Love and Death, by Watts, with its secret meaning which I could never quite formulate in a thought, though it often touched me with a vague emotion of pathos. When I unlocked the door into the garden the early morning air met me with its cold purity; on the stone step were the bowls of roses and delphiniums and sweet peas which Aunt Evelyn had carried out there before she went to bed; the scarlet disc of the sun had climbed an inch above the hills. Thrushes and blackbirds hopped and pecked busily on the dew-soaked lawn, and a pigeon was cooing monotonously from the belt of woodland which sloped from the garden toward the Weald. Down there in the belt of river-mist a goods train whistled as it puffed steadily away from the station with a distinctly heard clanking of buffers. How little I knew of the enormous world beyond that valley and those low green hills.
From over the fields and orchards Butley Church struck five in mellow tones. Then the clock indoors whizzed and confirmed it with a less resonant tongue. The Flower Show Match was hours away yet—more than six hours in fact. Suppose I’d better go back to bed again, I thought, or I’ll be feeling tired out before the match begins. Soon the maids would be stirring overhead, padding about the floor and talking in muffled voices. Meanwhile I stole down to the pantry to cut myself a piece of cake. What a stuffy, smelling place it was, with the taps dripping into the sink and a bluebottle fly buzzing sleepily on the ceiling. I inspected the village grocer’s calendar which was hanging from a nail. On it there was a picture of The Relief of Ladysmith … Old Kruger and the Boers. I never could make up my mind what it was all about, that Boer War, and it seemed such a long way off. … Yawning and munching I went creaking up to my room. It was broad daylight out of doors, but I was soon asleep again.