The Bird in the Tree

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “What nonsense!” she said to herself. “What nonsense! Though David leaves me, David and Nadine and her children, I still have the others.”

  But the others would not make up to her for the loss of David. He meant more to her than they did. And, too, he was the one whom all the others loved best. She had expected that when she died he would take her place as the focal point of the family. He had all the gifts that would have fitted him to do that, the sympathy, the love of hospitality, the strong sense of family and of place. “But never now,” she thought, “never now. Even though he comes back to see me sometimes he will never be the same David. This will be between us always. And the others, too, Stephen’s children, George’s, they will never take him now into the place that was mine. He is right. I cannot leave Damerosehay to him now.”

  Dully she wondered whom she could leave it to. All the others loved it but not, she thought, sufficiently to want the expense and bother of keeping it up. Only David really understood how she felt about it, only he who had grown up here loved it with that strong personal love of a man for his own bit of earth that was, she thought, one of the best things in life yet was under modern conditions so fast being lost.

  As David must lose it when he married Nadine. Suddenly she forgot everything in her anger against Nadine. She would not make David happy. Lucilla considered her a selfish woman, who would love only in a selfish way. She would be the worst wife possible for an artist, unaware that creative work demands a singleness of mind that must at times put everything else aside. Nadine would never be content to be put aside even for a moment. She would always be insistent with her claims; the clamour of them would exhaust David and spoil his work.

  Her anger brought Lucilla to the realization that she was taking up the attitude of defeat, she was taking for granted that in the struggle before them David would win, even as she had taken it for granted during their game of chess last night. She drew her breath sharply and sat up straighter. She would fight. She would not be defeated. Though she was old and he was young she would fight him and win. Looking back over the past conversation in the garden she thought she had taken no false step. Her wish that David and Nadine should stay quietly with her at Damerosehay for a while had been simply intuition, but she thought it had been a right one. Damerosehay would, she thought, in some mysterious way fight its own battle, bring its own pressure to bear upon David; the place was alive in every stick and stone, rich with some unknown history that was moulding both the present and future. She was in sympathetic touch with that history; she felt its touch very often; it would be on her side.

  Yet she would have her part to play too, and quietly she began to make her plans; what she would say to David, what to Nadine, in that one discussion that she had claimed, what she would make Hilary say. For a moment or two something of the old exhilaration of battle that she had known when she was younger came back to her and the colour rose in her cheeks. But it soon passed and she found that she was crying, a thing she never did, the tears making her head ache abominably. She was so dreadfully sorry for her son George. Until now she had selfishly hardly considered him, but it was the thought of his grief that finally broke her down. She cried and cried. She was dreadfully lonely in this trouble, she found, horribly lonely. . . . If only she could have told Ellen about it.

  And just at that moment Ellen entered, almost as though she had been listening outside the door for the first sound of weeping. In a grim silence she pulled the curtains, took Lucilla out of her dress and put her into her dressing-gown, laid her upon the bed and handed her her bottle of eau-de-cologne from her black velvet bag. “You’ll stay there, Milady,” she commanded, “till lunch, and if you’re not a lot better by lunch I’ll have something sent up.”

  “I must come down to lunch, Ellen,” sobbed Lucilla into her pillow, “because—because—oh, I can’t tell you, Ellen. And I can’t think why I’m crying. It’s a thing I never do.”

  “Ah,” said Ellen, and sniffed savagely. She was very angry, it appeared, though not apparently with Lucilla, for she put out a horny forefinger and very gently touched her cheek. Then she sat upon the table beside her the smelling salts, the sal volatile, two clean handkerchiefs, and a mirror and a powder puff for when she should be sufficiently recovered to take interest in her appearance again. Then she went out. “The idea!” she said indignantly at the door. “Did you ever hear? Well, I never!”

  CHAPTER

  5

  — 1 —

  THERE was another garden at Damerosehay besides the flower garden and the kitchen garden, and that was the wild garden, which lay to the west of the flower garden, the kitchen garden being on the north and the oak-wood on the south. It had originally been the part of the flower garden where the oak trees grew and Lucilla had made it by erecting another brick wall to divide them, and moving one of the beautiful wrought-iron gateways with which Damerosehay abounded from the kitchen garden to give access from one to the other. The wall was almost hidden now by the mind-your-own-business which tossed its sprays like white foam over it, and the gate was hidden by a great bush of guelder-roses, so that the wild garden was very secret indeed. Lucilla had wanted to keep some reminder of the Damerosehay that she had seen on that first spring morning, that overgrown place where she had dreamed of the blue bird and David had seen it, and so she had simply left the wild garden more or less alone to go mad as it liked. The grown-ups thought Lucilla was as crazy as the garden, but the children blessed her foresight every day of their lives.

  Especially Caroline. When she was here, with the boys at their lessons and the grown-ups busy over their mysterious employments, she knew that she would be quite alone, undisturbed by anyone except Jill bringing her her eleven o’clock milk and biscuits, and she liked Jill so much that she hardly counted as a separate person.

  Clasping Gladys, and smiling at David where he sat beneath the ilex tree, she ran through the tame garden, slipped behind the guelder-rose bush, and lifted the latch of the gate that led to the wild garden. It latched behind her and she gave a deep sigh of content and stood still for a minute to survey her kingdom.

  The oak-trees in the wild garden, sheltered by the wall and by their brothers in the wood, were less windblown and stunted than those outside. Their branches were less twisted and more graciously spread, the foliage thicker and their hoary lichened trunks stouter and straighter. They were less like battle-scarred warriors and more like wise and mellowed councillors, set there not for defence but for encouragement and support.

  And certainly the other growing things in the wild garden took every advantage of the encouragement offered. Traveller’s-joy grew everywhere. The honeysuckle raced up the oak-trees and in summer blew its trumpets victoriously at the very top, the mermaid rose, that hardy rambler that will go anywhere and catch hold of anything, clambered along the branches and sent festoons of creamy golden-hearted blossoms to sway in the wind beneath them like fairy swings. As for the mind-your-own-business, sadly restrained by Margaret as it was on the flower-garden side of the wall, it let itself go completely on the wild side. It leapt exultantly off the wall and hung in thick curtains of ivory blossom that swept the moss-grown path and even encroached upon the rough grass beyond.

  All the loveliest wild flowers grew in this grass in their seasons, primroses about the tree trunks in April, bluebells in May, ragged robins in June and daisies at all times. There were still garden flowers running riot here, michaelmas daisies, hollyhocks and Japanese anemones, lavender and rosemary, for Obadiah was allowed in now and then to scythe the grass and keep the brambles down so that they should not be choked completely out of existence. But there was never any suggestion of real cultivation in the wild garden, it was just a glorious natural wilderness of colour and scent.

  And how the birds loved it! They seemed scared of the strange twisted oak-trees beyond the wall, but these beneficent creatures inside were their friends, and the whole garden was th
eir sanctuary. The children put food here for them in winter and Tucker was severely chastised if she dared to come in over the wall. Even the dogs were discouraged, in case they should bark at the birds and frighten them. The blackbird, at such times as he was not singing in the ilex tree, was singing in the wild garden, and on the very top of the tallest tree a big missel thrush was forever crying out to the world that God is good. A robin lived here too, a bullfinch and a chaffinch, and the wives of these creatures, every kind of tit and wagtail, called by Jill “Polly dishwashers,” willow-wrens, hedge-sparrows and tree-creepers. On rare occasions a goldfinch was seen flashing his splendour through the trees, and a couple of exquisite rose-breasted redstarts fluttered over the bushes, so fragile that they seemed each of them more like a gasp of wonder than a bird. Only the sea birds never came here. They knew better. It was not their province. Once a sabine’s gull had tried to take refuge in the wild garden from a violent storm, but all the other birds had risen up in a cloud of fury and attacked him with savage beaks and raucous cries and he had fled back to the comparative kindness of the wind on the marshes.

  Spring, when the birds were nesting and the bluebells were budding, was the best time in the wild garden, but autumn could be lovely too. As Caroline stood gazing the Japanese anemones were like fallen moons beyond the grey trunks of the oak-trees and there was a soft mist of mauve where the autumn crocuses were growing in the rough grass. The fires of autumn had already touched the leaves over her head, and spun from twig to twig and from bush to bush was that exquisite silver filigree of dewy spiders’ webs. Caroline went slowly forward along the path that led in and out through the tree trunks to the secret centre of the garden where Methuselah was.

  He was the oldest of the oak-trees, taller and larger and hoarier than any. It was on his topmost branch that the missel thrush sang and among his leaves that the willow wrens nested. In spring the loveliest primroses grew about his gnarled old roots, and in autumn the autumn crocuses grew here thicker than anywhere else.

  When Lucilla had first come to Damerosehay she had found the remains of a battered swing hanging from the stoutest of Methuselah’s branches, showing that once a child had played here. She had taken it away and put a new one for David, and as the years went by an even stouter one to sustain the weight of Stephen’s children, and then a very strong one indeed to carry the sometimes combined weight of Ben, Tommy and Caroline. It was a perfect place to have a swing, for here you were as secret and safe as though shut up in the heart of a flower. No one could see you and you saw nothing except leaves and birds’ wings, flowers and grasses. No one visited you except the sunbeams or a silver shower of rain, and, sometimes, the lady and the little boy.

  Caroline, like David in his boyhood, was a lonely child. Except for Lucilla and her adored Jill she thought but little of the human race, and Grandmother and Jill were so often busy about other things that she did not see a great deal of them. Not that she minded. She liked solitude, especially in the wild garden. Yet like many solitaries she felt the need for some sort of companionship, even if it was only a companionship of her own creation. Talking to oneself palled, but Caroline found that if one shut one’s eyes and just talked, not to oneself but to someone unknown outside oneself, when one opened one’s eyes that someone was there. . . . And she thought the person really was there. She forgot, if she had ever realized, that her own wish had had creative power. . . . That was how she had got to know the lady and the little boy.

  It had happened first last year, when Mother had been staying with them, on an autumn day like this one, when she had been feeling particularly forlorn. She had eaten all the sugar out of the nursery cupboard and there had been a good deal of unpleasantness with Ellen, from which she had fled to the shelter of Methuselah’s kind arms. Sitting in the swing with the slow tears oozing out from under her shut lids she had felt the urgent need to tell somebody about it, and so she had just begun to tell.

  “I was not greedy,” she had said. “It was because Mother said I was a skinny little shrimp, and I thought that if I got fatter she might love me as much as she loves the boys and so I ate the sugar. Then Ellen scolded and Mother said I was a greedy little pig, and I couldn’t tell her why I had eaten the sugar because if I had I would have cried, and Mother doesn’t like crybabies.”

  At the end of this recitation she had opened her eyes and at first she had thought that all the autumn crocuses that were growing about her feet had flown up into the air like a cloud of butterflies, because there was a sort of mauve mist before her eyes, but when she looked again she saw that it was a lady in a mauve dress, with a lovely full skirt that swept over the grass like a wave of the sea.

  At first Caroline thought this lady was Mother, because she was tall and dark and slender like Mother, but when she looked again she saw that she wasn’t really a bit like Nadine. Her face was rounder and softer and her eyes shone in a way that told Caroline without any words that she, unlike Nadine, liked little girls every bit as much as little boys, and that she quite understood about the sugar. And then a funny little boy dressed in green, with red curls and a head far too large for his body, had popped out from behind the lady’s skirts and grinned at Caroline, and Caroline had wriggled out of the swing and run to him, and they had played in the garden together all the morning, and the lady had sat on the grass and laughed.

  Thinking it over afterwards Caroline could not remember what they had said to each other, if indeed they had said anything. But they had been blissfully happy. This mother had not been so much a mother, as the mother, the mother of everything in the garden, of herself and the little boy and the flowers and birds and everything. Though she was dressed in mauve instead of in blue, and wasn’t really a bit like her, yet she had somehow reminded Caroline of the picture of the Madonna that hung in the nursery. But her name wasn’t Mary. Caroline knew quite well it wasn’t Mary, though she didn’t know what it was.

  And as for the funny little boy, well, he was the perfect companion, that companion of whom we all of us dream under so many disguises, the outward form altering as the years go on, but yet seem somehow never to find.

  So often since that day Caroline had seen them, though only in the wild garden; indeed it sometimes seemed as though she could make them come at will simply by shutting her eyes and talking to them. She knew, as she trotted along to the swing with Gladys, that she was going to see them today. . . . And she did.

  When Jill brought her out her milk and biscuits at eleven she was sitting in the swing, very demure and bright-eyed and rather more rosy than usual.

  “Funny little thing that you are!” exclaimed Jill. “Happy all alone?”

  Caroline took her mug of milk and buried her nose in it. She vouchsafed no remarks but her eyes twinkled at Jill over the top. She could not tell even dear Jill about the lady and the little boy, but she could let her share her joy.

  Jill sat down on the grass beside Caroline with a sigh of relief. It was a joy to escape from Ellen’s perpetual harrying and be alone with Caroline for a little while in this lovely secret place. And mercifully Caroline was always a very long time absorbing her milk and biscuits, for she liked food and always made it last as long as possible. Jill sat very still, with Gladys in the crook of her arm, and lifted her face, her eyes closed, to the warm sunbeams that struck down through the branches of the oak-tree. She could hear the flutter of wings near her, and birdsong and the murmur of the sea, and her free hand, pressed down hard upon the earth, lifted itself unconsciously to caress the cool grass and the crocuses and the rough sun-warmed bark of the tree. “Well,” she ejaculated suddenly, “it would not be so bad to be blind, after all. The sound and feel of things is that nice.”

  Caroline gulped down the last of her milk, removed her countenance from her mug and looked at Jill a little anxiously. Jill was talking to herself and she was rather afraid that when she opened her eyes she might see the lady and the little boy.

/>   Yet all she said when she opened her eyes was, “Wipe your mouth, lovey. You’ve milk all round it.”

  Caroline took a microscopic handkerchief from up her knickers and wiped her mouth with relief. Somehow she did not want even Jill to know the secrets of this secret garden.

  Jill got up with reluctance. This old tree, with the patch of flower-jewelled turf around it and the trees and bushes closing it in on every side, always made her feel so safe. Had she been able to express what she felt she would have said that it was the inner sanctuary of the Damerosehay garden, as the drawing-room with the carved overmantel was the heart of the house. It seemed that in both of them the best of all that had ever been at Damerosehay was very safely kept. From them its life’s blood flowed out. She picked up Caroline’s mug and went away very slowly. It was always hard to leave the wild garden.

  When Jill had gone the little boy came out from behind the tree trunk and Caroline played with him for a long time, while the lady sat in the swing, her mauve skirt billowing out over the crocuses, and laughed. And then suddenly they were not there, and Caroline wondered why until she heard a clear whistling in the garden, like the blackbird but yet not the blackbird. It was David’s whistle that he always used to tell the children that he was coming.

  That was one of the things that the children liked about David. He understood quite well that grown-ups were invaders from another country, and that one did not want to be unexpectedly caught by them doing something which they would probably neither understand nor approve of. He always gave warning of his coming.