the parlour at the green man is the parlour pure and simple. it calls itself by no grand-sounding title. you eat there, you sit there to smoke and talk—if you do not sit in the garden, and you write there.
it has five round tables, deal, and covered with strong white cloths. it has rush-bottomed chairs; it has casement windows; it has a great fireplace with oak settles on either side of it. for the rest, the walls are buff-washed, and hung with coloured prints, mainly of a sporting nature. the floor is red stone, with three mats on it. the mats are made of small loose strips of coloured stuff. the window curtains are of highly coloured chintz.
the front door of the green man stands flush with the cobbled pavement. above the door swings the square sign with the name painted [pg 236]thereon. it is a question, in malford, from whence that name has originated. the oldest inhabitants of the place, in particular mrs. joan selby, who has passed her ninetieth birthday, will tell you that it is in honour of the little people, who, long years since, footed it in the moonlight on the grassy hill behind the house. she will declare that she had it from the present owner’s great-grandfather himself, that the first visitor to the house, when it was yet unnamed, was a little man, clad in green, red-capped, who promised luck in his own name and that of his tribe.
this, you may believe, is looked upon as sheer superstition by the younger and more enlightened of the inhabitants of malford. there is one ribald wag, who declares that the name originated through the verdant propensities of a former owner.
but for my part i lean to the first theory. and if you had ever sat in the moonlight on the grassy hill behind the house, had seen the dark green of the fairy rings among the brighter green of the field, had heard the rippling of the stream at the foot of the hill, had seen the pale gold of the massed primroses, had smelled their sweet fragrant scent, [pg 237]had seen the misty shimmer of countless bluebells, then, i fancy, you also would have been of my way of thinking.
elizabeth sat at one of the round tables by an open casement window.
it looked on to a grass terrace bordered by brilliant galadias. beyond the galadias was a tiny stream, rippling, amber-coloured, over rounded stones. beyond the stream was a grassy hill, sloping upwards to a beech-wood. beyond that again was the blue sky.
“it really is extraordinarily pleasant,” said elizabeth.
and then she turned to her coffee pot. the coffee poured into a blue and white cup, she was stirring it thoughtfully, when the door opened.
a man paused for the merest fraction of a second on the threshold. it evidently came as a bit of a surprise to him to find the room already occupied.
elizabeth looked at the man. the man looked at elizabeth.
she saw a big man in loose tweeds, shabby tweeds, which had seen much service. she saw a square-faced man, with a mat of darkish red hair.
[pg 238]
he saw a glossy-haired, brown-haired woman, a woman with a palely bronzed skin, beneath which there was an underglow of red, a woman with red lips finely moulded, with a square chin, with a delicately chiselled nose, with steady grey eyes in which there was an under-note of something akin to laughter. she wore a cream-coloured cotton dress. a pink la france rose was tucked into the front of her gown.
david, used to the rapid assimilation of details, saw all this at a glance. then he crossed to the table in the other window. it had been laid so that it faced hers, and fearing lest he should appear guilty of an obtrusive staring, he gazed out of the window.
the arrival of his breakfast providing occupation for hands and eyes, david turned to the table. a moment later he found that the sugar had been forgotten.
now, the green man is devoid of bells. in some ways it is distinctly primitive. a brass knocker on the front door announces the arrival of visitors. for the rest your own vocal cords are employed.
ordinarily david would have gone to the door [pg 239]and shouted, but the presence of elizabeth causing some absurd little diffidence in his mind, he sipped his coffee unsweetened. to a sweet-toothed man non-sugared coffee is peculiarly unpalatable. he set down his cup with a half-grimace, and glanced round the room. by good luck there might be a sugar bowl on an unoccupied table. there was not.
elizabeth had noticed the former hesitation; she had likewise noticed the slight grimace, and the present unavailing glance around the room. two and two were put rapidly together in her mind. she gave her own sugar bowl a slight push.
“here is some sugar,” said she in her pleasant voice.
it was a most trifling incident. at the moment david merely said “thank you,” and availed himself of the proffered bowl. twenty minutes later, meeting in the garden by the stream, it gave a slight excuse for speech. it gave elizabeth the excuse for speech. you may be sure david would never have ventured on it.
“what a dreamy spot!” said she, turning with a smile.
if you knew elizabeth well, you would know that this was one of her favourite adjectives. it [pg 240]summed up at once beauty, picturesqueness, colour, and entire enjoyment of anything.
“it is good,” said david briefly.
elizabeth’s eyes twinkled. she liked the speech. it was in this fashion, so we are told, that god regarded his creation,—that is before mother eve, beguiled by the old serpent, had upset matters. yet after all, in spite of his upsettings, there are times and places which yet fill us with some faint sense of that pristine perfection.
of course elizabeth knew perfectly well who he was. that may well go without saying. but, in spite of john having said that he was a decent fellow, he wasn’t in the remotest degree like her mental conception of him.
she had pictured him a big man—which he truly was, also a bluff man, a jovial man, a talker, a bit loud-voiced, perhaps a trifle assertive, at all events very confident of himself, and all these things he was not. it had not taxed elizabeth’s intuition very vastly to perceive that, contrary to all her expectations, there was an extraordinary diffidence about him. he wasn’t the least certain of himself, he wasn’t the least jovial nor loud-voiced, while something in his eyes,—well, i have [pg 241]mentioned his eyes before. somehow elizabeth’s mind swung to her little dusty-haired, grey-eyed patrick in ireland. she saw him in the throes of grappling with one of those world problems to which the cleverest of us can find but a poor answer, heard a small voice say wearily:
“mummy, there is some things what is very difficult to understand.”
of course it was an absurd comparison. what had this big man in common with the perplexities of a childish mind? nevertheless for a brief space she had thought of patrick.
“you can almost,” said elizabeth, “see the good folk come trooping down that hill.
“up the airy mountain,
down the rushing glen,
we daren’t go a-hunting
for fear of little men;
wee folk, good folk
trooping altogether;
green jacket, red cap,
and white owl’s feather!”
she quoted.
“i like that,” said david, “what is it? is there any more?”
[pg 242]
patrick had once said nearly these very words.
“it’s called,” said elizabeth below her breath, “‘the fairies,’ and it is by william allingham. of course he ought never to have called it that. the little people hate that name. it’s a marvel, understanding as much as he did, that he didn’t know. and there are five more verses.”
“tell me,” said david.
“oh!” laughed elizabeth. but she went on.
“down along the rocky shore
some make their home,
they live on crispy pancakes
of yellow tide foam;
some in the reeds
of the black mountain lake,
with frogs for their watch dogs
all night awake.
“high on the hill-top
the old king sits;
he is now so old and grey
he’s nigh lost his wits.
with a bridge of white mist
columbkill he crosses,
on his stately journeys
from slieveleague to rosses;
[pg 243]
or going up with music
on cold starry nights
to sup with the queen
of the gay northern lights.
“they stole little bridget
for seven years long;
when she came down again
her friends were all gone.
they took her lightly back
between the night and morrow,
they thought she was fast asleep,
but she was dead with sorrow.
they have kept her ever since
deep within a lake,
on a bed of flag-leaves
watching till she wake.
“by the craggy hillside
through the mosses bare,
they have planted thorn-trees
for pleasure here and there.
if any man so daring
as dig them up for spite,
he shall find their sharpest thorns
in his bed at night.
“up the airy mountain
down the rushing glen,
we daren’t go a-hunting
for fear of little men;
wee folk, good folk.
[pg 244]
trooping altogether;
green jacket, red cap,
and white owl’s feather.”
“they don’t sound altogether friendly,” said david as she stopped.
“oh,” she assured him, “they are only unfriendly towards those who dislike and fear them. those who fear them have to be constantly propitiating them. there’s nothing they hate like fear, and therefore they demand toll from cowards. for those who love the little people—you should hear my small son patrick talk about them,” she ended.
david looked a trifle bewildered.
“do you truly believe—” he began.
she looked at him, half-laughing, half-serious.
“honestly i don’t know,” she said. “i’m living in the depths of ireland, and all that kind of thing is infectious. sometimes i laugh at myself for giving it a moment’s thought, and the next i’m saying, there must be something in it. as for patrick, you’d as easily shake his belief in me as his belief in the good people. after all, who knows? he says he does. but then children [pg 245]may have the key to a door of which we know nothing, or, at the best, but fancy we have caught a glimpse.”
there was a little silence, broken only by the sound of running water.
“and now,” said elizabeth, “i must unpack. i was too lazy last night. my evening frock will be crushed out of all recognition.”
david pricked up his ears.
“i didn’t know people wore evening dress in the country,” said he.
elizabeth laughed.
“john—my brother, mr. mortimer—does,” she replied. “i believe he’d sooner go without his dinner than omit dressing for it.”
“mr. mortimer!” ejaculated david. “do you mean that?” the gravity of his tone seemed unwarranted by the triviality of the question.
“mean it? of course i do,” replied elizabeth.
and then she saw his face.
“what on earth does it mean?” thought elizabeth to herself.
“glory be to god, you’ve done it now!” father maloney would have exclaimed.
already her presence was making itself felt.
