Thank you so much for telling me that you think I'm behaving pretty well, considering. But I wonder what you'll say in your next, after my last?
Every day since then I've been meaning to write, if only a short note, but we've had early starts and late stops; and then, from not sleeping at night, I'm often so tired when the end of the day comes that I feel too stupid to try and earn your compliments.
It is morning, and I'm writing out of doors, sitting on a rock, close by the sea. But before I begin to describe Lulworth, I must tell you a little about the glorious things of which I've had flying glimpses since the letter dated Compton Arms. This is our first all-night stopping place since we left Stony Cross "for good," but I've picked up many a marvellous memory by the way.
People who haven't seen the New Forest haven't seen England.
I had no idea what it was like till we stayed there. I knew from guide-books that there were thousands of acres of woodland still, though much had been "deforested"; but I didn't know it hid many beautiful villages, and even towns. It's a heavenly place for motoring, but I'm not sure it wouldn't be even better to walk, because you could eke out the joy of it longer. I should like a walking honeymoon (a whole round moon) in the New Forest--if it were with just the right man.
Oh, I mustn't forget to say I'm glad I didn't see Rufus's Stone by daylight. Mrs. Senter and Dick went the morning after I wrote to you, but I wouldn't go again, because I didn't want to lose the enchanted picture in my mind. She laughed when I refused. I could have slapped her. But never mind.
When they came back they were disgusted, and said there was a ginger-beer woman and a man with the game of "Aunt Sally," and a crowd of cockney excursionists round them and the Stone. Talk of malfays!
Sir Lionel had made out an itinerary for the day, and we were to start for Lyndhurst, Beaulieu Abbey, Lymington, Brockenhurst, and Mark Ash, all of which we were to visit before evening, coming back by way of Lyndhurst again, and stopping there for tea. But before we got off, such a comic thing happened.
I didn't think to mention it in a letter, but one day we passed a motor-car that was having tire trouble by the side of the road. The chauffeur was rolling on a new tire, with a curious-looking machine, in which Young Nick was passionately interested, as he'd never seen one before. Sir Lionel explained that it was an American tool, not very long invented, and said to be good. He added, in an evil moment, that he wished he'd thought to buy one like it before leaving London, as probably the thing couldn't be got in the Provinces.
Well, just as we were about to spin away in great style from the Compton Arms, one of our tires sighed, and settled down for an unearned rest. But instead of looking black-browed and murderous, as he did when the same thing occurred before, Nick smiled gleefully. He jumped down, and without a word produced a machine exactly like the one his master admired a few days ago.
"Where did you get that?" asked Sir Lionel.
"Last night, sahib," returned Nick, imperturbably. (He can speak quite good English.)
"What! Since we had our trouble?"
"Yes, sahib." An odd expression now began to play among Nick's brown features, like a breeze over a field of growing wheat.
"How's that? There's no shop."
"The sahib says true. I found this thing."
"Where?" sharply.
"But a little way from here. In the road."
"You rascal," exclaimed Sir Lionel. "You stole it."
Young Nick made Buddha eyebrows and a Buddha gesture. "The sahib knows all. But if I did take it? Those men, they were going again to the big city. We away. They never miss this. They buy another. It is better we have it."
Trying to look very angry, though I knew he was dying to laugh, Sir Lionel reproached Nick for breaking a solemn promise. "You swore you'd never do such a thing in England if I brought you with me. Now you've begun again, the same old game. I shall have to send you back, that is all."
"Then I die, and _that_ is all," replied Young Nick, calmly.
The end of the story is, that Sir Lionel found out the names of the men, who had spent the night at the Compton Arms, and had written their address in the visitors' book. He sent the tool to them, with an explanation which I should have loved to read. And it appears that, though Nick is honest personally, he is a thief for the car, and in Bengal took anything new and nice which other motors had and his hadn't.
Now, Mrs. Norton is afraid that, if Sir Lionel scolds him much, he will commit hari-kari on the threshold of the hotel, which would be embarrassing. And it does no good to tell her that hari-kari is a Japanese or Chinese trick. She says, if Nick would not do that he might do something worse.
Gliding over the perfect roads of the Forest, Apollo seemed actually to float. I never felt anything so delicious, and so like being a goddess reclining on a wind-blown cloud. No wonder motorists' faces, when you can see them, almost always look madly happy. So different from "hay motorists," as The Blot says. _They_ generally look grumpy.
The little wild ponies were one of the Forest's surprises for me. We met lots of them, mostly miniature mothers giving their innocent-faced, rough babies an airing; delightful beastkins. And I almost liked Mrs. Senter for having a cousin who owns one of these ponies as a pet, a dwarf one, no bigger than a St. Bernard dog. It wears a collar with silver bells, follows her everywhere, thinks nothing of curling up on a drawing-room sofa, and once was found on its mistress's bed, asleep on a new Paris hat.
The enticing rose-bowered cottages we passed ought to have told me that we were back in Hampshire again, if the New Forest hadn't seemed to a poor little foreigner like a separate county all by itself. It would be no credit to a bride to clamour for love in such a cottage, and turn up her nose at palaces. She might be married at the beautiful church of Lyndhurst (a most immediate jewel of a church, with an exquisite altar-piece by Lord Leighton, a Flaxman, and a startlingly fine piece of sculpture by an artist named Cockerell), then, safely wedded, plunge with her bridegroom into the Forest, and be perfectly happy without ever coming out again. I wish I had had the "Forest Lovers" to re-read while we were there. I think Maurice Hewlett must have got part of his inspiration in those mysterious green "walks" which lead away into that land where fairy lore and historic legend go hand in hand.
Lyndhurst, which King George III. loved, is pretty, but we didn't stop to look at it, because we were coming back that way. After seeing the church which, though modern, I wouldn't have missed for a great deal, we spun on to Beaulieu Abbey, the home of a hero of motoring. There we saw a perfect house, rising among trees, and sharing with the sky a clear sheet of water as a mirror. Once this was a guest-house for the Abbey; now it's called the Palace House, and deserves its name. Its looking-glass is really only a long creek, which spills out of the Solent, but it seems like a lake; and you've only to walk along a meadow path to the refectory of the old abbey. From there you go through a mysterious door into the ruined cloisters, which used to belong to the Cistercians--the "White Monks." King John provided money for the building; which proves that it's an ill wind which blows no one any good, because the stingy, tyrannical old king wouldn't have given a penny to the abbots if they hadn't scourged him in a nightmare he had. I shan't soon forget the magnolia and the myrtle in the quadrangle, and if I were one of the long-vanished monks, I should haunt the place. There couldn't be a lovelier one.
From Beaulieu we went to Lymington, a quaint and ancient town, with a picturesque port. Everything there looked happy and sleepy, except the postillions on the Bournemouth coach, which was stopping at the hotel where we had an early lunch. They were wide awake and jolly, under their old-fashioned, broad-brimmed beaver hats.
After Lymington, we skimmed through the Forest, hardly knowing or caring whither, though we did manage to find Brockenhurst, and Mark Ash, which was almost the finest of all with its glorious trees. Our one wish was to avoid highways, and Sir Lionel was clever about that. The sweetest bit was a mere by-path, hardly to be called a road, though the surface was superb. Young Nick had to get down and open a gate, which led into what seemed a private place, and no one who hadn't been told to go that way would have thought of it. On the other side of the gate it was just another part of forest fairyland, whose inhabitants turned themselves into trees as we, in our motor-car, intruded on them. I never saw such extraordinary imitations of the evergreen family as they contrived on the spur of the moment. It was a glamorous wood, and throughout the whole forest I had more and more the feeling that England isn't so small as it's painted. There are such vast spaces not lived in at all, yet haunted with legend and history. One place we passed--hardly a place, it was so small--was called Tyrrel's Ford; and there Sir Walter Tyrrel is said to have stopped to have his horse's shoes reversed by a blacksmith, on his flight to the sea, after killing the Red King. Or no, now I remember, this was next day, between Ringwood and Christchurch!