IN MIDSUMMER the morning walk to the station is one long snuff of green and gold. On the winding stony lane through the Estates, before you reach the straight highway to the railroad, it is a continual sharp intake through the nostrils, an attempt to savour and identify the rich, moist smells of early day. That tangle of woodland we would like to call by the good old English word spinney, if only to haul in an equally ancient pun. It is in the spinney that you get the top of the morning. Dew is on the darkening blackberries. Little gauzy cobwebs are spread everywhere on grass and bushes, suggesting handkerchiefs dropped by revelling midnight dryads. The little handkerchiefs are all very soppy—do the dryads suffer from hay fever? As you emerge onto the straight station road, it is comforting if you see, not far away, some commuter whose time-sense is reliable trudging not too far ahead. When that long perspective is empty anxiety fills the breast. Across the level Long Island plain come occasional musical whistles from trains on the other line—the Westbury branch. But the practiced commuter knows his own whistle and alarms not at alien shrillings.
In midsummer the subaltern life around us is grown lusty. The spider is in his heyday and cannot be denied. Even indoors he shrewdly penetrates. Looking for a book along the shelves, our eye was caught by the hasty climb of one small spinner, who had been hanging on his airy cord apparently also scanning the titles. To the top of the case he retired, beyond reach. We wish him luck and hope no domestic besom may find him. The young lumpish robins that used to flutter heavily across the road, easily within grasp, fat paunches of feathers upon incapable wings—these are now strong of flight and cat-safe. The young rabbits with whom our woods are crowded no longer stand curiously in the roadway almost until our foot is on them. They too are maturing and have learned wise suspicion. The mole nightly increases his meandering subway, which looks like a zigzagging varicose vein on the surface of the lawn. And Gissing, untaught by menace or thrashing, every night buffets down more of the phlox plants so carefully set out by Titania, in his caperings with a roving Airedale from no one knows where. Only the pond noises seem to have lessened in vitality. The frogs are growing cynical, perhaps. In the sylvester midnight—thanks to Mr. C. E. Montague for that pretty phrase—they utter only an occasional disillusioned twangle, like the pluck of a loose bass string.
But there are signs that the Salamis Estates, so long a rustic Nirvana, are going to fall under the hand of civilization. Which will, one doubts not, have its advantages. It will be helpful to have gas to cook with; and sidewalks are enjoyable for baby carriages and velocipedes. But we shall never forget the happy Salamis Estates as they still are—the lonely roads through virgin woods; the little hidden lakes; the old abandoned orchard buried in overgrowth of vines and forest; solitude and sanctuary. It is our darling old horror of a Salamis railway station that has spared us the evils of “development.” The casual passenger looking out on that gruesome pagoda of claret-coloured brick and the huddle of wooden shacks around it, can only think of Salamis as a place damned and forgotten. When some of our neighbours grunt about that station we think inwardly of it with affection. It has spared us much. There are some people, of course, who really like to live in an artificed toy park like Nassau Boulevard or Garden City. We were raised on the books of Mayne Reid and Du Chaillu; we are for the jungle.
Yet we would not admit impediments to progress, if it does not rob our rustic Eden of all its wilderness charm. And anyhow progress is coming willynil. Actually, in the past six months, we have seen several houses built on the outskirts of our region. The new Methodist kirk, though apparently halted temporarily while our good dominy raises some more funds, is already shoulder-high. Another church, years ago foundered to the status of a saloon, now does brisking business as garage. The little empty lodge at the entrance to the Estates, where we vote on election days, will some day be a tea-room, we suspect. It is ideal for that purpose, with its big open fireplace. In fact, we have heard influential Salamites say that it could be had almost rent-free by some really refined lady as a pekoe-saloon. Those who move the destinies of the Estates think that a nice tea-room there would help the tone of the neighbourhood. We pass this information on to ambitious ladies, on condition we are allowed to have three lumps and an extra pat of butter.
It is all very interesting, because we are going to have a unique opportunity to see exactly how civilization works. We have watched new signboards go up at the front and back entrances to the Estates. Not long ago a hundred thousand people might have gone by and never known our little world was there. We study the new board of a Mortgage Company announcing Desirable Plots. Yes, we can see a plot. Civilization is plotting to take us under its wing. We are going to have a good look at this thing they call civilization and see how it goes about it. Five years from now will we be able to see cows being driven home from their daily pasture near our Green Escape? We are not blind to omens. Just as lightning glimmers even through eyelids closed in bed, so behind the leafy screen of our still scatheless sanctum we can see the bright eyes of Real Estate men blazing in the sky. Well ... there are compensations. Our title is clean and clear, and our second mortgage sticks to us closer than a shinplaster. Wait till they try to buy us out; we’ll get some of our own back.
So we meditate, partly as poet and partly as Man of Affairs, as we walk homeward up the hill. The singing peanut-wagon of George Vlachos, steaming its thin, pensive tune, comes clopping wearily down the road, the white horse shambling a bit after a long day on the highways. FRESH ROSTED PEANUTS, CANDY, ICE CREAM, says the legend. We note the pile of fresh shingles beside the little house going up near the station; we sniff the tang of mortar where our good friend Mr. Corliss will next year be preaching the word of God in his new steeple-house (as George Fox would have called it). We wonder where the Salamis Heights movie will be, when it comes? That, and an occasional street-lamp up in our tangled knolls, will make it easier to keep servants, very likely. And think of having gas to cook with instead of those oil stoves.... Yes, perhaps civilization will have merits.
