MY Devon hermitage is only a sixteenth-century cottage rented at four pounds a year. There are two bedrooms, very small and lime-washed, and a living room with a stone floor and open hearth. A simple place, built of cob, and thatched, with a walled-in garden before it, and then the village street. The churchyard with its elm-rookery is on one side, a small brook below the wall. Even in the hot summer the water runs; I have made a pool of stones where the swallows and martins can go for the mud to build their homes. Beautiful it is to see, in the shadow of the trees, these birds alighting softly on a boulder, or by the pool’s edge, and shovelling the red mortar on their beaks. They are timid, restless things, rising into the air at the least noise. I have passed many hours in watching them, noting the number of times they came in a minute, and how they mix fragments of dried grass and straw with the mud before taking the material aloft. All the while the water murmured, and the birds answered with gentle song. They soon came to know me, and minded not my presence; and I kept away marauding village cats—lean animals with pointed ears and staring eyes; a race existing on rats.
Sometimes a little boy comes and stands by me, and watches them too. He is a funny little fellow, about two and a half years old, with yellow curls and solemn brown eyes. His name is Ernie, and his father is a labourer, a very kind man. He used to spend all his money in the inn, but suddenly took a wife, and drank no more. When Ernie is a naughty boy, he threatens to go “up to pub,” and Ernie wails immediately, and is good again.
“I got this one,” says Ernie, coming to the cottage door, and holding out in a filthy paw a piece of cake. “You ain’t got this one, ave ee?”
“Go away, Ernie, I’m writing.”
“You ain’t got this one,” he replies, munching the cake, “ave ee, Mis’r Wisson?”
I feel more comfortable in the company of children than with “grown-ups”; and to discourage his talk I put my tongue out, and make a hideous face.
“Ah’ll cut ees tongue off, ah wull,” he gravely warns, repeating what his mother has said to him when he has done it to her—a frequent happening, I fear; I taught him to do it.
“Good-bye,” I shout.
Then he departs, and five minutes later I hear a feeble “’onk-’onk-’onk” in my garden. Ernie is driving his car, which he has made from my wheelbarrow, a cinder sifter, and an egg-shaped pair of pram-wheels.
“’Onk-’onk,” he cries to the sparrows, “git out, ’onk-’onk.” Then on seeing me: “I got this one. You ain’t got this one, ’ave ee?”
“Noomye!” I exclaim, while Ernie goes faster and faster.
This motor-car is not the only toy. The pram-wheels, or “wills,” as he calls them, are a source of happiness. A broom tied to the axle acts as a horse, and Ernie goes driving in the road. Other small brats come up, and a puppy dog or two, and great fun they have, often ending up in the stream.
Ernie’s mother is always finding him in the water. She cannot keep him away. He goes out in a clean jersey, knickers, and socks, and suddenly there is a cry for Ernie, a rushing past the door, a curse from myself, and a loud wail.
“You come out of that water, my boy! I told you not to go in that water. Little devil, you,” cries the exasperated mother.
“Ah’ll tull feyther,” shrieks Ernie, as he is driven like a porker past the door. His sobs grow less, and a minute later he comes back and stares at me.
“I got some good water,” he informs me. “You ain’t got no water, ’ave ee?” And he toddles away for more.
He delights in the filthiest old can or bottle. He loves to kneel down and see the water bubbling in. Sometimes it is a “cup of tea” he has got, or a “glass of beer.” And always he has “got this one.”
He appears to be wandering about at all hours of the day and night. The life of a recluse in a cottage, remote from ordinary life, has its moments of exaltation, especially in the lovely months of spring and summer, but when the wind sways the leafless trees and whirls the cold rain, it is hard to prevent melancholy. On these occasions I go and have a chat with Ernie’s parents, my immediate neighbours. Often I find Ernie asleep at the table, with his curls in the empty plate. The little imp has been all day in the water, or on a long tour in his motor, and has fallen asleep from exhaustion. He breathes quietly, his mouth droops.
“Poor lill chap, he’m be tired,” says Ernie’s father; “dear lill boy, he’m be.”
It is always the same tender remark. No wonder Ernie loves his father. But this does not prevent the most savage quarrelling sometimes. Then through the wall I hear him yelling,—
“Dawbake!—dawbake!—dawbake!”
And his father’s threat (it never materialises into action), “Naughty boy, swearin’! Ah’ll tell plicemun!”
“Dawbake!—dawbake!—dawbake!” yells Ernie.
“Ee shouldn’t speak tew ees feyther like that.”
“Dawbake!” moans Ernie, and hides his curly head at father’s knees.
“Could never whip ee,” mutters the parent, “ee be so little.”
“Of course,” I agree, having decided notions about the relation of the big parent to the tiny child.
Every day it is the same. Ernie in the water, Ernie covered with mud and jam. Ernie holding out pails, bottles, cans, kettles, and food for me to see.
“You ain’t got this one, ’ave ee? I got this one. Ah’ll tell plicemun of ee, Mis’r Wisson, swearin’! I got my wills. You ain’t got no wills. I got the wills.”
“Go away, boy!” I shout, as once a schoolmaster used to bellow at me.
He departs, but returns with a cup of muddy water.
“I got a glass o’ beer. ’Tis mine, it is. Yaas.”
Dirty face, wet boots, disturbing voice, everlasting questions, and possessive boastings—how can I complete the various volumes of The Flax of Dream, with Ernie always pestering. I have told him again and again that I wish he would go away to another cottage. But if he were to, I should be miserable, and miss my long motor-rides with Ernie among the cabbages, while the driver wears an enormous pair of his father’s boots. I should miss, too, the accounts of how Ernie has killed rats and rabbits with a stone and how he cut off the policeman’s head with a knife because the policeman used a swear word to Ernie.