Brown Bread from a Colonial Oven/Chapter 8

by Blanche Edith Baughan

VIII

RED AND YELLOW AND RIPE

“There!” said Mrs. Nye with decision, as she put away the last of the breakfast things. “An’ now not another stroke o’ work do I lay hand to, until I get Ted’s tea to-night. Come then, beauty,” as a great sandy cat came sidling round her skirts, “here’s your saucer. Mice an’ milk, milk an’ mice, that’s about all you need to want, ain’t it, Buffy? You never come out aboard ship to live in a new country about as meller as a new potater, an’ with its months all hupside down; you don’t need to ’ave no hankerin’s. Call this Hapril!” she said with a sudden little burst of scorn. “W’en it’s as soft a September day as ever I see . . . with the wind so sleepin’, an’ the sky as blue as blue, an’ the sun that ripenin’ it do seem a sin there ain’t nothin’ ’ere for it to ripe—only this cold old Hocean, what won’t never grow sweet, come all Eternity. Now, Buffy, I’m a-goin’ to fill up your saucer again, an’ that’s to do for dinner—hear, Puss? ’Cause autumn is a-callin’ an’ a-callin’ o’ pore missus, an’ missus, she’s a-goin’ forth to find it.”

While she had been speaking, Mrs. Nye had been putting her apron off and her boots and her bonnet on. Now she carried out both cat and saucer to the shed, locked the house-door, hung the key in the secret nook known only to her son and herself, and went down the white shell path, and out on to the road.

The cottage was one of a straggling handful built almost upon the brink of a wide estuary. There was first the sandy road, then a narrow border of sea-side plants—lemon lupin and pink convolvulus, flowerless at this season, pale bents and the weed vituperated by gardeners under the name of “fat-hen”; then came the foreshore of wan sand, littered with dry grey waterweed; and then the greenish water. The tide was at half-ebb this morning, and islets of yellow-grey mud emerged from it here and there; the sand-dunes that formed the opposite shore lay so low and so far off that they made only the narrowest of auburn lines against the steep, empty sky.

Things seen differ, as we know, with the angle from which we see them; looked down upon from the inland hills, the river-mouth shone all a lovely maze of rare curves and colours. But, here at the Point, it was incontestably a very flat world, and somewhat dull of hue. Neither did its ramshackle settlement do much to redeem it. The cottages looked as though they had been run up in some unusually brisk fishing or bathing season, and then left to luck—which had subsided. Half of them were empty, most were untidy, and one and all were dingy, with grey tin roofs, and weatherboards that pleaded for the paint-pot in vain. The fence of one was made out of rusty kerosene-tin tops—unique but not beautiful; and none of the inhabitants seemed to have thought of planting trees or a garden. Tree-mallow was as far as they had got; there were a few mallows sprawling here and there, whose coarse growth seemed only to intensify the general dreariness.

Ted Nye had promised his mother, however, that he would make her a garden some day, and really would paint the house these very next Easter holidays; and it could not be denied that the Point was conveniently close to the cement-works where he was employed. Still, Mrs. Nye’s best comfort lay in the reflection that, as soon as ever he got a rise, she would coax him to remove. There were plenty of quite pretty places not so very far away—that valley, for example, at the entrance of which the car stopped on the way to town; there were trees there!

Mrs. Nye was a woman to whom beauty—only of a certain kind, it is true: not the beauty that is in the least difficult, or shy, or wild, but beauty perfectly defined and positive—made a strong appeal; how strong, she herself had had no idea, before she came to live in this place that lacked it so completely. Not that, even now, she could perhaps have named her need; but she felt it acutely, and this gentle autumn weather, by recalling its former satisfactions, had given it a terrible edge. Those trees in that sheltered valley, those oaks and elms and ashes would be “turning” now! It was to them that her thoughts and steps alike were hurrying her this morning. The still, shining afternoon of the previous day had determined her upon the expedition, and she had prepared for it by replacing the pink roses in her summer bonnet with a knot of orange and flame nasturtiums that she had luckily had by her.

“All the same old grey an’ brown an’ drab, an’ green as ain’t green, an’ blue as ain’t blue—that’s all you are,” she complained to the waterside as she went along it. “Somethink ’ot-coloured an’ tasty is what I want. You’re like sister-law Marthy’s mutton ’ash, what never ’ad no pepper, nor no honion. Come autumn skies, my pore sight do seem to water for things red, an’ yaller, an’ ripe.”

She boarded the car, and left it, quite successfully. It was still an achievement, for her native city had never shown her an electric car. Soon she found herself walking straight inland; on one side of her the water, become a good, tame, understandable river now, nicely held in between green banks not too far apart; and, on the other, high hills, that kept the valley safe from the sea winds. Round a corner of the hills the road went; she followed, and was at once in—ah! what a different world! A poplar-tree hung over the fence, and greeted her with the peculiar, nutty fragrance of fallen leaves. That was as it were the turning of the key in Exile’s unclimbable gate to our homesick friend. “Ah-h-h! I smell autumn!” she said, with a sigh of intense relief.

And then she came to a hedge—a hedge of gorse, and barberry, and sweet-brier high over her head; and the gorse was in bright yellow blossom, the barberry and brier were in bright red fruit. In loops and festoons and sprays their brilliance leapt out naked upon the full soft blue of the sky, and a great black-and-crimson butterfly hovered about them. . . . Talk of colour!

Mrs. Nye could not get past this hedge for a long time. She had brought a little lunch with her, and she sat down by the roadside and ate it with her eyes on the hedge all the while, “so as to save time. I just want to get my heyes soaked in all them good warm hips an’ fuzz,” she said to herself. And when at last she did manage to walk on, it was still into fresh delight; for in a little flat enclosure at the foot of the hills, there now appeared three peach-trees, late-bearing peach-trees of the golden-fleshed variety, and their crop had not yet been gathered. Mrs. Nye stood before them fairly transfixed. She had never seen peaches growing at all before; she had only seen them laid on cotton-wool within shop windows.

“Ain’t they lovely, oh, ain’t they strokeable?” she said. “Talk o’ yaller-an’-red, these be rosy an’ primrosy; an’ did ever you see any ripeness look more round?”

And now she came to a plantation of oaks, and the leaves were changing: next, the road skirted a paddock, and in the paddock, as well as Antipodean blue-gums, stood one or two English elms, changing too! and the grass beneath them was all green from the rains of March—almost green enough to fit it for English grass, if one excused it a little, as Mrs. Nye was only too glad to do. “See what a droughty summer it ’as been!” she pleaded to that depth of uncompromising truth within her which could not quite allow the “paddock” to be a “meadow.”

And then, finally, she reached some cottages; and, although they were only built flimsily of wood, and had tin roofs, and could not in any way pretend to be the real thing in cottages, yet they stood each one in a garden of its own, and all the gardens were full of flowers, and all the flowers had the proper autumn gorgeousness and glow. Dahlias there were, velvet-rich, deeply or brightly crimson; yellow sunflowers, “red-hot pokers,” gaudy zinnias and gaillardias; the scarlet fires of salvia, and the sweet, clear brilliance of carnations.

The last cottage of all, too, was separated from its neighbours by a small apple-orchard. Mrs. Nye had to stop and look at that—at those balls of colour, russet-gold and ruddy, basking so cosily, with the sunshine settled on them, among the still-thick leaves. “Apples is such a friendly fruit!” she said. “That’s Nonparrle, ain’t you? an’ you’re Cox’s Orange, an’ there’s some pearmains—I halwus did like pearmains, so pretty in their shape as well as toothsome, an’ streaked like a old lady’s cheek. Dear heart alive! do but look at they great yaller, yaller pears, too. . . . Pears? No, they ain’t. Looks like a quince for shape, but I never see quinces grow thick as that!”

A few steps farther brought her within sight of the cottage to which the orchard belonged. It was a little cottage, very low in the roof, almost buried in tall bushes of lilac, and built—oh wonder! of stone; and its door was painted with that queer green-blue that, however faded, contrives somehow always to look vivid, and that you see so often at the seaside in England, and so seldom anywhere else. The garden, too, was a little different from its neighbours. Snapdragons grew in the wide borders on either side the narrow red-brick path that led from gate to door—old-fashioned, ordinary snap-dragons, purplish-crimson with the sulphur mouth; and there were tall wands of golden rod, verbenas purple and rose, and masses of ardent orange marigolds with dark eyes. A creamy-white clematis, too, full of tiny flowers that smelt strong of almonds, hung like a shower of stars against the blue lattice of the porch; but the most noticeable thing about the garden was its abundance of Michaelmas daisies. In great clumps, almost bushes, they grew up and down each border; they were of every possible shade of purple, from the royalest Tyrian to the palest mauve, and the clumps were all most carefully tied up.

As Mrs. Nye paused to admire them, an old woman came out of the cottage with a hank of flax in her hands, to bind one up that had begun to straggle; a dumpy little old woman, in a dress of grey, and a sun-bonnet of washed-out purple print, very much the colour of some of the daisies, and “just the livin’ double of Aunt Sarah Jane’s, at Minster,” Mrs. Nye said to herself. The old lady was too much absorbed in her task to notice anything beyond it, and Mrs. Nye could not resist standing still a little while to watch her. “Ties it up just as tender as tyin’ a child in its pinny, don’t she?” she mused. But presently the gardener mislaid her scissors: they had fallen into the marigolds below, and Mrs. Nye, whose instincts were strongly helpful, was compelled to call out and tell her so. It ended in her going into the garden to pick them out.

“I’m much obliged to ye, I’m sure. Stranger, ain’t ye, dear? I don’t remember to ha’ seen ye ’ereabout afore,” said the little old lady, looking up at her with dim blue eyes.

She was really an old lady; she would never see eighty again, Mrs. Nye decided.

“Yes’m,” she replied respectfully, for she belonged to a generation that had learnt enough to reverence old age. “’Tain’t but nine months, come next Saturday week, as I left my ’ome in Englan’.”

“Englan’? Ah, an’ I come from Henglan’, too,” said the little old lady. “But ’tis five-an’-forty year ago, so it is. My kettle’s just a-singin’, dear; won’t ye step in, an’ set down, an’ ’ave a nice cup o’ tea wi’ me, an’ talk a bit about ’Ome? Do, now.”

If she had suggested a nice cup of poison, with that same tempting accompaniment, I believe Mrs. Nye would almost have accepted it. She followed her hostess in through the green-blue door, to a room which was a little dark, and a little airless, as English cottage-rooms are apt to be, and none the less welcome to our friend on that account. The heavy furniture, too, was delightfully reminiscent—there was a great deal of shining darkwood about it; there was a grandfather’s clock in one corner, and in another a cupboard with glass doors, and china gleaming through the glass; and on the mantel-piece there was a Toby jug, and some great sea-shells shining faintly with pink and silver.

The little old lady spread a cloth on a little round table, somewhat lopsided with age, that Mrs. Nye could fairly have kissed, it was so like one she herself had left behind; and made the tea. It was excellent tea; half a crown a pound at least, the visitor felt sure; tea is apt to be your real old cottager’s one indulgence. The two women, as they sat, sipping it out of their saucers, and deep in chat, made a suggestive contrast. Mrs. Nye was tall and upright still, her figure was matronly, her black hair still black, her brown eyes quick and bright; the “hot-coloured” nasturtiums in her bonnet were very becoming; the warm brown of her dress lent agreeable emphasis to the roses in her cheeks. The little old lady, on the other hand—Mrs. Stone, it appeared, was her name—was shrunken and shrivelled and bent, and her colouring, originally light, was faded now into colourlessness. She and her buxom companion might well have been sitting as models of early autumn and late.

Mrs. Stone spent her days alone, it appeared, in this little old house that her husband, dead these many years, had built; but she had a married daughter near who “saw to her,” and who “would a’ had me there to live,” she explained, “but there! Childer! Borne ’em I ’ave, an’ buried ’em I ’ave, but now I can’t seem to do wi’ their clatter no more—young things is that restless an’ rumbustious. Which part o’ Henglan’ d’you say you come from, dear?” she inquired.

“I come from Canterbury—Canterbury in England,” Mrs. Nye answered, not without a little sigh. “Did you know Canterbury, might I ask, ’m?”

But Mrs. Stone shook her head.

“Come from the coast, I did,” she said. “Nor never was one fer to gad. There was a ‘treat,’ once, I remember, to Canterbury, but I didn’t go. No; never was one fer to gad, I wasn’t.”

“Oh, but what a pity!” exclaimed Mrs. Nye. “For then you could a seen the holdest church in Hengland, St. Martin’s, with its roses round it—an’ the Cathederal, all grey, with Bell Harry Tower in the middle a-builded up into the blue—an’ the rooks in the elm-trees in the Close—an’ the city walls—an’ the Westgate, as the Pilgrims useter come through on their knees, ’underds o’ years ago, an’——”

“Ho, but we ’ad a castle near hus,” interrupted Mrs. Stone with pride. “Which that was ’underds o’ years old, too. An’ as fer the halms-’ouses, I’ve heered tell as they was more’n three ’underd. An’ as nice warm little ’ouses as you could wish for to see, wi’ gable-roofs, an’ moss, an’ pink ’ouse-leek on the thatch. Eh, dear me—me an’ Mary Ann Joyce, we did alwus promise oursel’s, so we did, when we was young things together, as when we was old, the two of us ’ud end our days in the far corner one, what ’ad the pear-tree a-climbin’ up to the bedroom winder, an’ the swallers a-nestin’ in the heaves——”

“Ah, yes—them swallers, pretty dears! Don’t one miss the swallers!” cried Mrs. Nye, eagerly catching back from her companion the ball of fond reminiscence. “Can’t I see ’em, such a balmy day as this! . . . by the millbridge, say, in the meadows, with the two elms beside, an’ the tall ’ouse near with Virginny creeper all over it, red as any bonfire . . . . an’ them swallers a-sweepin’ an’ a-swoopin’ about over the shiny water in the front, as would be like a glass, to show all up. Or up an’ down the High Street, too, they’d be, flickerin’ back an’ forth them old red, ruddy ’ouses—as ’ud glow, come sunset, just as rich——! You don’t see none such ’ere—seems as if the very ’ouses was ripe at ’Ome, don’t it?” she said regretfully, “an’ the air too—kind o’ sleepy an’ sunny-like, an’ a little bit thick an’ soft. Here, it alwus ’as a kind o’ thinness, to my taste, an’ the tang an’ tart o’ the sea’s got in it.”

“We ’ad a castle, an’ it were by the sea,” chanted Mrs. Stone, in her turn. “A round grey tower it ’ad got, with a gold bird upon it, fer to tell the wind, an’ it’s there as the swallers used fer to gether come the hautumn, fer to go hover the seas. Aye, I did love for to watch ’em, when I were a little ’un! My clemaytis come from the Castle garding,” she added proudly. “An’ all the rest o’ the garding, what time them birdies was a-getherin’, ’ud be all so drowsy like, an’ still . . . wi’ the bees a-hummin’ an’ the sun a-sunnin’, an’ the air so ca’m an’ all; an’ the ripe green figs on the fig-tree in the moat all a-tied up in little white musling bags, fear o’ the wopses” (wasps), “an’ the borders all Michaelmas daisies an’ goldy-rod—an’ one big lemming verbena, too, there was, wi’ little lilic flowers . . . aye, I can smell it still, that smell, though tis’ forty-five year old. . . . That’s why I got so much daisy in my garding, dear. I didn’t ’ave so much goldy-rod, ’cause purple is nat’ral hautumn colour, ain’t it?”

“Oh,” protested Mrs. Nye, “purple? Nay—’tis too grave, purple is. Do but cast your mind back to the bright brambles, an’ the creeper, an’ the hips an’ haws—all red; and the beeches an’ the hoaks, all yaller, an’ the ricks a-baskin’, an’ the very stubble shinin’, an’ the happles in the horchards a-colourin’, an——”

“No, no, but them daisies at the Castle, an’ the sea-lavender Joe’d bring in from the marshes,” persisted Mrs. Stone dreamily, and with pauses, “an’ the loosun” (lucerne), “an’ ’arebells, an’ gipsy-roses—pincushies some calls ’em—from the downs . . . an’ the downs theirsel’s a-greyin’, wi’ the crops all gethered an’ the sainfoin done, an’ the Channel mistifying in the sunshine . . . heverythink a-palin, an’ a-soothin’ down, an’ a-goin’ off to sleep, like. That’s hautumn, dear; very peaceful,” said the old soul simply.

There was a little pause, each woman brooding over her memories as the sun broods over the straw-ricks. Then,

“To be sure,” said Mrs. Nye, doubtfully, “my Ted will ’ave it as there’s so much old at ’Ome, it keeps the new growth back. ‘Henglan’s full of old walls’, says he, ‘for to keep the pore man in, an’ old notions,’ ’e says, ‘for to keep ’im down. Gimme room,’ ’e says, ‘to rise, if so be there’s risin’ in me,’ says ’e’—an’ I aren’t denyin’ but what ’e ’ave got a better wage out ’ere, nor I don’t see no low-class lot about, neither, like them London ’op-pickers of ours, all rogues an’ rags. But I dunno! Maybe, as you get on in years, what you like best is what you know best. I remember when I was young, I used to get fair out o’ hand in spring, it tickled me so, heverythink startin’ again so fresh; but now ’tis autumn with my years, ’tis the ripenin’ season seems to be my crave, an’ the ripe old ways. Queer new ones they got ’ere, some of ’em—too hindependent by ’arf, to my thinkin’. I like to look up to my betters, I do, for my own self-respeck; betters as is betters, I mean; in course they ain’t alwus such—there’s some at ’Ome I could name,” she added reflectively. “An’ I must say I do like the way, out ’ere, the men ’ll let the women ’ave their share o’ the say without a-shuttin’ of ’em up an’ a-puttin’ of em’ down as if the Lord ’ad packed all the sense there is inside the men’s ’eads—which dear knows ’E ain’t! Yet they carries it altogether too far, so they do. Why, only yestiday there was a man come round—a man, mind you!—a-wantin’ me to put my name down so as I could vote. Vote? Me? Lor’ bless the man! I ain’t no sufferingette, an’ so I hups an’ tells ’im. ’Ow fractious they been gettin’ at ’Ome again, ain’t they, them sufferingettes?”

“Which kind o’ jet’s that, dear?” asked Mrs. Stone. “I got a brooch real Whitby.”

“No, no! What! ain’t you never ’eard tell o’ the sufferingettes—them women as wants to go an’ vote in Parlymint, same as the men?” explained Mrs. Nye.

“Oh! The bold ’ussies! The ’aughty faggits!” said the old lady, much shocked.

“Vote, indeed!” Mrs. Nye went on contemptuously. “‘My mother never ’ad no vote, an’ she was as good a woman as hever lived,’ I says to ’im, ‘so what do I want one for?’ says I.”

“An’ that’s just what I says to the sewin’ machine gentleman, an’ these ’ere patent soaps,” said Mrs. Stone with approval. “‘My mother did without ’em’, says I, ‘an’ what was good enough for ’er is good enough for me, I ’ope,’ says I.”

Mrs. Nye was silent. She had fought the Customs bravely over her cherished machine, and she found a certain powder invaluable on Monday mornings. The whirring of a motor-car filled up the conversational gap.

“Drat the things! If God A’mighty had a-meant a man to go at that rate ’E’d a-give ’im twenty legs, an’ so I halwus tells the doctor,” said the old lady irritably.

But Canterbury-in-England is well-acquainted with motors, so, “If ’tis a doctor’s, I ’spect it’s all the better for ’is patients,” said Mrs. Nye, leniently.

“I dunno so much about that,” said the other, darkly.

“Well, come, them trams is handy, though, ain’t they?” urged Mrs. Nye.

“The trams? I dunno, dear,” said the old lady again. “I ain’t never been nigh ’em. I’m too old, I am, for these ’ere new-fanglements. Maggie, she were wild for to take me, but says I, ‘You take an’ leave me in peace,’ I says. ‘Why, you’d see the sea again, mother,’ says she—but lor, there! ’tweren’t no manner o’ use. Not but what I’d like to git a sight o’ the sea too, mind you, for I come from the coast, I did.”

“Well, and I live by the sea,” said Mrs. Nye, hospitably, though in secret amazement that anybody should really ever wish to have sight of it. “Just you get your daughter to put you on the tram some day—it goes as smooth as smooth—an’ I’ll meet it, an’ you’ll come an’ ’ave a nice cup o’ tea along o’ me. Now do, ’m!”

But Mrs. Stone shook her ancient head.

“I never was one to gad,” said she, with pious pride. “At Kingsdown near by Walmer were I born, an’ never beyond Deal did I go, which it were but a matter o’ three mile—an’ quite fur enough, too, of a ’ot day.”

“Well, but then you come out to New Zealand?” pleaded Mrs. Nye.

“Aye, an’ that were a matter o’ twel’ thousan’ mile, if the tales they used fer to tell o’ shipboard was true—which they wasn’t, all on ’em—an’ ain’t that gaddin’ enough fer a lifetime?” demanded Mrs. Stone with dignity. “No, no, dear—thankin’ you kindly all the same, I’m sure. . . . There’s another thing,” she added slowly. “Things does change to you so, an’ you do change so to things. There was a friend o’ mine, an’ she went back’ ’Ome after thretty year away, an’ they’d changed, an’ she’d changed, an’ there wasn’t one soul of ’em all as knew ’er, nor yet ’er a soul, excep’—who d’ye think? the village loony! He hadn’t changed, d’ye see, neither in his looks nor yet ’is outlooks, ’cause ’e hadn’t never growed on. But my very vittles is changed to me,” she went on plaintively, “an’ so ’ow do I know as the sea itself ’ud be the old sea to me now? Aye, dear me, ’tis all change, life is! Only the dead as doesn’t change—an’ the loonies, as grows to a bit o’ growth, an’ then stops, an’ never grows on. Changes, changes—aye, dear, aye, dear. . . .” Her voice grew so murmuring and vacant, that Mrs. Nye told herself she had tired the old lady out, and got up to go.

The westering sun, glowing low through the fat-hen leaves, was painting them to delectable stained-glass tints of rose and ruby and amber, as Mrs. Nye neared home that night, a basket of ripe tomatoes and golden quinces on one arm, and in the other a great sheaf of flowers—snapdragons, golden-rod, and Michaelmas daisies in all shades of purple. Ted, who had got home before her, opening the door, smiled at her decorative appearance.

“Why, mother, you reg’lar light the Point up—you look like a Harvest Thanksgiving out for the evenin’,” said he. Ted was very fond of his mother.

“Well, an’ I’m sure I feel like a thanksgivin’, too,” she returned. “I been to see the nicest little old lady, Ted, that like your great-aunt at Minster! an’ comes from ’Ome an’ all, too, down Walmer way. Only think, it took me two hours to get to ’er to-day, while I could a-reached Walmer in an hour from Canterbury, couldn’t I? only that it never struck me to go—seems some’ow easier to get yourself on the move out ’ere. But there! we bin a-talkin’ o’ the old places, till it do feel nearly as good as if I’d been a-seein’ of ’em all again—an’ she give me all these, an’ I’m to be sure an’ go again. A little out o’ touch with the times, to be sure,” she went on, bustling about to get tea ready. “’Fraid o’ the trams, an’ rubs her wash the old way, an’ never heered tell, even, o’ them sufferingettes. Ah, well, ’tis in the nature o’ things, though, I s’pose, once they’re got full ripe to get——”

“Rotten,” said Ted carelessly, piling poor Mrs. Stone’s tomatoes on to a plate. “Paint for the roof-is much of a muchness with these ’ere, mother—I brought it ’ome to-day. Next week I’ll ’ave it on; and that’ll tickle the sun, I bet, when he looks along this way.”

“So do, dear, so do!” said his gratified mother. “No, not rotten, dear, I didn’t mean, but p’raps a bit withery, an’ off the sap, like?—Dear heart! do but look at that low weed, ’ow it glories! And ain’t the sun right rich? There’s Buffy’s coat a-glintin’ like a suvrin’, an’ Mrs. Wicks’s paraffin-fence as goldy-silvery as a kipper ’errin’ skin. It do seem as if even the Point was a bit reddish an’ yallery to-night,” she added happily, “an’ I s’pose this country, though now, to speak my honest mind, I can’t but call it raw, ’ll run along to ripeness, too, some day. Though ’ow a timber-an’-tin buildin’ three ’underd year old, is a-goin’ to look—well, that I’m sure I can’t say!”