The Worn Doorstep
BY
MARGARET SHERWOOD
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1917
Copyright, 1916,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published, September, 1916
Reprinted, October, 1916
November, 1916 (five times)
December, 1916 (five times)
February, 1917
Printers
S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
THE WORN DOORSTEP
August 25, 1914. At last I have found the very place for ourhousekeeping; I have been searching for days: did you know it, dear?The quest that we began together I had to follow after you went to thefront; and, through the crashes of tragic rumours that have rolledthrough England, I have gone on and on, not running away or trying toescape, but full of need to find the right corner, the right wallagainst which I could put my back and stand to face these greatoncoming troubles. I have travelled by slow trains across quiet countrywhich does not as yet know there is war; I have driven in anold-fashioned stage or post wagon,—you never told me that there weresuch things left in your country,—past yellow harvest fields in calmAugust weather; I have even walked for miles by green hedgerows, whichwear here and there a belated blossom, searching for that village ofour dreams where our home should be, quiet enough for the work of thescholar, green for two lovers of the country, and grey with the touchof time. I knew that now it could be almost anywhere; that it did notmatter if it were not near Oxford, and it seemed to me that I shouldrather have it a bit—but not too far—away from the "dreaming spires."So I went on and on, with just one thought in my mind, because I wasdetermined to carry out our plan to the full, and because I did notdare stay still. There's a great strange pain in my head when I amquiet, as if all the mountains of the earth were pressing down on it,and I have to go somewhere, slip out from under them before they crushme quite.
Often, at a distance, I thought that I had found it; thatched roofs orred tiles, or a lovely old Norman church tower would make me sure thatmy search was done; but again and again I found myself mistaken, I canhardly tell you why. You know without telling, as you must know all Iam writing before I make the letters, and yet it eases my mind towrite. At no time did you seem very far as I searched hill country andlevel lands, watching haystacks and flocks of sheep, sometimes throughsunny showers of English rain.
But now I have discovered our village, the very one that I dreamed inchildhood, that you and I pictured together, and I know that at last Ihave come home. I knew it by the rooks, for I arrived late in theafternoon, and the rooks were flying homeward to the great elms by thechurch,—groups of them, here, there, and everywhere, black against thesunset. Such a chattering and gossiping, as they went to bed in thetreetops! Such joy of home and bedtime! I knew it by the grey churchtower in its shelter of green leaves, and the ancient little stonechurch on the top of the gentle hill among its old, old, lichen-coveredtombstones.
The villa