CHAPTER III
July 8th.
Thornycroft is by way of being a small poultry farm.
In reaching it from Barbury Green, you take the first left-hand road, gotill you drop, and there you are.
It reminds me of my "grandmother's farm at Older." Did you know the songwhen you were a child?--
My grandmother had a very fine farm 'Way down in the fields of Older. With a cluck-cluck here, And a cluck-cluck there, Here and there a cluck-cluck, Cluck-cluck here and there, Down in the fields at Older.
It goes on for ever by the simple subterfuge of changing a few words ineach verse.
My grandmother had a very fine farm 'Way down in the fields of Older. With a quack-quack here, And a quack-quack there, Here and there a quack-quack, Quack-quack here and there, Down in the fields at Older.
This is followed by the gobble-gobble, moo-moo, baa-baa, etc., as long asthe laureate's imagination and the infant's breath hold good. The tuneis pretty, and I do not know, or did not, when I was young, a morefascinating lyric.
{The sitting hens: p17.jpg}
Thornycroft House must have belonged to a country gentleman once upon atime, or to more than one; men who built on a bit here and there once ina hundred years, until finally we have this charmingly irregular anddilapidated whole. You go up three steps into Mrs. Heaven's room, downtwo into mine, while Phoebe's is up in a sort of turret with long, narrowlattices opening into the creepers. There are crooked littlestair-cases, passages that branch off into other passages and leadnowhere in particular; I can't think of a better house in which to playhide and seek on a wet day. In front, what was once, doubtless, a green,is cut up into greens; to wit, a vegetable garden, where the onions,turnips, and potatoes grow cosily up to the very door-sill; theutilitarian aspect of it all being varied by some scarlet-runners and ascattering of poppies on either side of the path.
The Belgian hares have their habitation in a corner fifty feet distant;one large enclosure for poultry lies just outside the sweetbrier hedge;the others, with all the houses and coops, are in the meadow at the back,where also our tumbler pigeons are kept.
Phoebe attends to the poultry; it is her department. Mr. Heaven hasneither the force nor the _finesse_ required, and the gentle reader whothinks these qualities unneeded in so humble a calling has only to spenda few days at Thornycroft to be convinced. Mrs. Heaven would be of use,but she is dressing the Square Baby in the morning and putting him to bedat night just at the hours when the feathered young things are undergoingthe same operation.
A Goose Girl, like a poet, is sometimes born, sometimes otherwise. I amof the born variety. No training was necessary; I put my head on mypillow as a complicated product of modern civilisation on a Tuesdaynight, and on a Wednesday morning I awoke as a Goose Girl.
{Hens . . . go to bed at a virtuous hour: p19.jpg}
My destiny slumbered during the day, but at eight o'clock I heard aterrific squawking in the direction of the duck-ponds, and, aimlesslydrifting in that direction, I came upon Phoebe trying to induce ducks anddrakes, geese and ganders, to retire for the night. They have to bedriven into enclosures behind fences of wire netting, fastened intolittle rat-proof boxes, or shut into separate coops, so as to be safefrom their natural enemies, the rats and foxes; which, obeying, Isuppose, the law of supply and demand, abound in this neighbourhood. Theold ganders are allowed their liberty, being of such age, discretion,sagacity, and pugnacity that they can be trusted to fight their ownbattles.
{Ducks and geese . . . would roam the streets till morning: p20.jpg}
The intelligence of hens, though modest, is of such an order that itprompts them to go to bed at a virtuous hour of their own accord; butducks and geese have to be materially assisted, or I believe they wouldroam till morning. Never did small boy detest and resist being carriedoff to his nursery as these dullards, young and old, detest and resistbeing driven to theirs. Whether they suffer from insomnia, or nightmare,or whether they simply prefer the sweet air of liberty (and death) to theodour of captivity and the coop, I have no means of knowing.
{The pole was not long enough: p21.jpg}
Phoebe stood by one of the duck-ponds, a long pole in her hand, and ahelpless expression in that doughlike countenance of hers, where aimlesscontours and features unite to make a kind of facial blur. (What doesthe carrier see in it?) The pole was not long enough to reach the ducks,and Phoebe's method lacked spirit and adroitness, so that it was natural,perhaps, that they refused to leave the water, the evening being warm,with an uncommon fine sunset.
{They . . . waddle under the wrong fence: p22.jpg}
I saw the situation at once and ran to meet it with a glow of interestand anticipation. If there is anything in the world I enjoy, it ismaking somebody do something that he doesn't want to do; and if, whenvictory perches upon my banner, the somebody can be brought to say thathe ought to have done it without my making him, that adds theunforgettable touch to pleasure, though seldom, alas! does it happen.Then ensued the delightful and stimulating hour that has now become afeature of the day; an hour in which the remembrance of the table-d'hotedinner at the Hydro, going on at identically the same time, only stirs meto a keener joy and gratitude.
{Honking and hissing like a bewildered orchestra: p23.jpg}
{Harried and pecked by the big geese: p24.jpg}
The ducks swim round in circles, hide under the willows, and attempt tocreep into the rat-holes in the banks, a stupidity so crass that itmerits instant death, which it somehow always escapes. Then they comeout in couples and waddle under the wrong fence into the lower meadow,fly madly under the tool-house, pitch blindly in with the sitting hens,and out again in short order, all the time quacking and squawking,honking and hissing like a bewildered orchestra. By dint of splashingthe water with poles, throwing pebbles, beating the shrubs at the pond'sedges, "shooing" frantically with our skirts, crawling beneath bars tohead them off, and prodding them from under bushes to urge them on, wefinally get the older ones out of the water and the younger ones intosome sort of relation to their various retreats; but, owing to their lackof geography, hatred of home, and general recalcitrancy, they none ofthem turn up in the right place and have to be sorted out. We uncoverthe top of the little house, or the enclosure as it may be, or reach inat the door, and, seizing the struggling victim, drag him forth and takehim where he should have had the wit to go in the first instance. Theweak ones get in with the strong and are in danger of being trampled; twoMay goslings that look almost full-grown have run into a house with abrood of ducklings a week old. There are twenty-seven crowded into onecoop, five in another, nineteen in another; the gosling with one leg hasto come out, and the duckling threatened with the gapes; their place iswith the "invaleeds," as Phoebe calls them, but they never learn thelocation of the hospital, nor have the slightest scruple about spreadingcontagious diseases.
{In solitary splendour: p25.jpg}
Finally, when we have separated and sorted exhaustively, an operation inwhich Phoebe shows a delicacy of discrimination and a fearlessness ofattack amounting to genius, we count the entire number and find severalmissing. Searching for their animate or inanimate bodies, we "scoop" onefrom under the tool-house, chance upon two more who are being harried andpecked by the big geese in the lower meadow, and discover one sailing byhimself in solitary splendour in the middle of the deserted pond, a lookof evil triumph in his bead-like eye. Still we lack one young duckling,and he at length is found dead by the hedge. A rat has evidently seizedhim and choked him at a single throttle, but in such haste that he hasnot had time to carry away the tiny body.
"Poor think!" says Phoebe tearfully; "it looks as if it was 'it with somekind of a wepping. I don't know whatever to do with the rats, they'regettin' that fearocious!"
Before I was admitted into daily contact with the living goose (myprevious intercourse with him having been carried on when gravy
andstuffing obscured his true personality), I thought him a very Dreyfusamong fowls, a sorely slandered bird, to whom justice had never beendone; for even the gentle Darwin is hard upon him. My opinion isundergoing some slight modifications, but I withhold judgment at present,hoping that some of the follies, faults, vagaries, and limitations that Iobserve in Phoebe's geese may be due to Phoebe's educational methods,which were, before my advent, those of the darkest ages.