All-Story Weekly/Volume 98/Number 3/Fires Rekindled/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
"A SMALL VILLA NEAR TWICKENHAM."
I LIVE too much alone, and my mind feeds upon itself. It might have been wholesomer to plunge into the present life of London, enter into the thoughts and feelings of the people, keep my ears alert for the alarm of Zeppelin attacks, read the daily accounts in the newspapers of vicissitudes at the front, accept opportunities to attend sessions of Parliament, make myself a sympathetic and informed part of this greatest crisis of known history. I might have lived thus, had Joan remained with me—and I have more than once considered seeking out her and my brother-in-law in France, and seeing actual passages of the terrible struggle. But I've done nothing of all this.
It may be want of resolution to obey what any common sensible person would call the dictates of common sense. But it may be that I am governed by the injunctions of a sense that is not common, or at least is not commonly heeded. In animals, it is called instinct; in man, intuition. In either case, it is a spiritual leading. The simple structure of the animal mind disables them from rejecting this leading; but men's minds have become so sophisticated by inferences, deductions, doubts, by all the subtle jugglery of cause and effect, that they mistrust the hints and guidance of the spirit, and laboriously reason their way through life as tropical explorers chop their path through the jungle with a machete. They are confirmed in this procedure by the Pucklike suggestions of all manner of anomalous impulses, often of physiological origin, or the fruit of idle and selfish propensity. Having been misled or betrayed by these, they shake their heads at the fine call of the inner voice; they can no longer discriminate between the authentic and the bogus!
Common sense tempts me, at times; but intuition holds me still. I will see this adventure through to the end. And though I am still groping in the mists of perplexity and conjecture, the results which I have attained warrant me in persevering.
For a time, indeed, after my last writing here, I turned my back on Mrs. Blodgett's rooms and the British Museum alike, and went exploring in London neighborhoods. One sunny morning I took a taxi out to Richmond on the Thames, dismissed it there, and proceeded on foot. The principal street of the town conveys a pleasant antique impression, and some of the ivy-grown mansions and precincts had a familiar aspect, which disappeared, however, upon a more categorical examination. Consciousness has a sort of penumbra, made up, I suppose, of anticipation, or of remembered information, which, if left undisturbed in its harmless function, plays pretty tricks of this kind.
I lingered on the hog-backed bridge, and could fancy that I had leaned on that gray stone parapet before, and enjoyed the soft mirror which the river held beneath the dense, overhanging foliage of the winding margin toward the north. On the other side of the bridge I saw the oak-covered acclivity of Richmond Hill come down to the water on the left and on the right, green lawns of private villas, bordered by the foot-path. There is a quality in cultivated country loveliness which, given similar elements, renders one scene reminiscent of what one has seen before. Nature, in her infinite variety, pretends to repeat herself.
I passed on to the Twickenham side, walking slowly and enjoyingly, as if with a beloved hand in mine. It might be about a mile to the ancient church, with its graveyard, that stands as the outpost of the village, at the turn of the road.
Before reaching this, however, I paused before the gate of a villa, itself invisible behind its environing trees and shrubbery. When had I been accustomed to enter this gateway and pace up that curving drive to the villa's door?
The gate stood open, and I went in. In a moment or two the villa was revealed, built of gray stone, with pointed gables and projecting lower windows; on the right was outspread a down of silken turf, a couple of acres in extent, protected from the road by a hedge and a row of trees. When, and with what companion, had I known this place?
I advanced toward the house, which seemed to be unoccupied; but at this juncture an elderly man, with a stoop in his gait, came round the corner of the building—a gardener, apparently, and eyed me narrowly, suspecting me perhaps of being a German spy! "Is the house to let?" I asked him, by way of accounting for my intrusion. But before he could answer me, I found myself, to my own surprise, continuing: "I used to live here, a good many years ago," I said, "and if you have the keys, I should like to look over the place again!"
My sober appearance and matter-of-fact speech relieved his misgivings, perhaps; he mumbled something, to which I paid no attention, and, producing a bunch of keys, led me round to a side door, and I entered. But I halted in the passageway. "The house has been altered!" I exclaimed. "There used to be a partition here. There was no doorway here in my time. The staircase seems different. Who has been been living here?"
My annoyance must have been perceptible in my tone. The effect of the changes was as if a clumsy hand had been introducing "improvements" into a picture by an old master. The walls had been repainted. Whatever was still recognizable had a forlorn appearance—a mellow past shamed by the invasion of a smart present. I appreciated more than ever the conservatism of the Blodgett dynasty!
The man mumbled explanations. The present owner had come into possession just before the war. He had made the improvements for the better accommodation of the bride he had been bringing home; before they could establish themselves, he had been called to the colors, and was killed in the first battle of the Marne. The widow had gone back to her own family, and the house had stood vacant ever since.
"Has the second floor been altered, too?" I asked.
"Yes, sir—all over, more or less!"
"I won't go any further," I said. "I'd like to take a look at the garden, though."
"You'll find the grounds pretty near as they always was, sir," remarked the man, as we came out again.
"This lawn is said to be one of the eldest in England—it goes back to Henry VIII's time," I said, pausing on the brink of the broad silken carpet, on which the sunshine lay lovingly, and the shadows of the trees seemed to melt into it. "There was a sun-dial over yonder that had stood for five hundred years!"
"There's no finer lawn in England!" returned the man; "you'll find no deeper turf anywhere." He picked up a stake and a mallet that were leaning against the house, and, with half a dozen blows, drove the stake three feet into the green surface. He drew it out again, and showed me that the pointed end had not yet reached through to the soil. The turf closed over the wound like water. It was all a dense mat of finely interwoven roots, the result of the constant mowing of centuries.
"Yes, I remember we put up a marquee tent out there, and the pegs left no trace when we pulled them up," I said. "Let's have a look at the sun-dial."
"It's a bit crumbling, sir, but it 'll hold out maybe a century yet," observed the man, as he followed me across the grass, which sank, elastic, beneath our tread.
The sense of companionship, which I had lost inside the house, had now returned. She and I had occupied the place during one summer only, and much of our time had been spent in this verdurous and flowery enclosure. She dressed in white frocks: the sun sparkled on her hair. We had plucked flowers of antique fashion in the garden adjoining; that faithful, dark-haired waiting-woman of hers had spread out rugs to protect us from the damp, and here had we lain, luxurious, when the dial marked noon, and the blue shadow of the great lime-tree had crept silently toward us over the fairy grass-blades.
Leaning back against the shaft of the dial, she had looked upon me with her brilliant, laughing eyes, and had sung and sung—ballads, love ditties, frolicsome arias—oh, never was nightingale to be compared with that marvelous voice! Perfect love, perfectly enshrined! And here I stood once more! Surely, would I but turn my head a trifle, I should see her at my shoulder, lovely, loving, fresh and radiant as ever!
The man had wandered off. I could see him stooping about in the garden at the left, cutting roses, white tulips and purple chrysanthemums from their stalks. I put my arms round the ancient dial, and rested my head upon it. I had not looked forward to this; I had thought that our house in lower Seymour Street was our only trysting-place. But it all came flowing fragrantly back into my memory now! Was it, in truth, a hundred years ago—"on the banks of the Thames, near Twickenham, a small, well-appointed villa"? Yes, I remembered it all! Was that a nightingale singing among the lime-trees?
The man came back after a while with the flowers; a friendliness had grown up between us; he seemed to have understanding. I ruffled his composure a little with the present of a sovereign. The flowers from her garden stand on my table as I write.