Part 9

If people love their home, there is no wrong time for coming back to it; and, were it not for the delight of returning, I doubt if it would be wise, save under compulsion, ever to leave it. Tacitus asks, Who would quit Italy for Germany, were it not that Germany is his own country? Over English folk, at all worthy of their great descent, the name of England exercises a more enthralling spell even than that of Italy; and the Garden that I love is all the dearer to me because it is thoroughly English. But the moment for returning to it fell out most felicitously; and, gazing on the scene that awaited us, we were instantly weaned from all regret even for the sky and sunshine of Tuscany. Under the broad-trunked, wide-spreading Oak,—Veronica has christened this particular plot of ground the Oak Parlour,—Five O’Clock Tea was waiting for us, and once more we looked on one of those Urns which, I am told, have made the owner’s name a household word in many kindly hearts. I need not say again how happy we had been in our Tuscan villa, and I verily believe that Veronica would contrive to make us comfortable in the desert of Sahara. But it is idle to pretend that all we mean by the word ‘Home’ is to be had save in this, our own island; and there is all the difference in the world between Perfetta and the tearful _cameriere_ who, I suppose, has now returned to his _antico mestiere_, and is smothering Desdemona before some provincial Tuscan audience, and the Northern handmaidens who, moulded by the genius of Veronica, perform with noiseless celerity every office that can minister to the grace of existence. Do not think me material if I say that that first Five O’Clock Tea in the Oak Parlour after our return was an event in our life; for its charm was compounded of many elements, into which entered the abiding influence of unluxurious domestic refinement. The green antiquity of the oak, the smooth verdure of the lawn, unattainable, I fear, by the services of a shepherd lass and her flock of nibbling sheep, the luxuriance and variety of the flowers, the view, under the oaken branches, of the Manor-House, white with roses from ground to gable, the snowy face of the tablecloth, the glow of the burnished urn, the brightness, the spotlessness, the seemliness of everything, all contributed to the welcome that attended us, and to the pleasure we received from it.

But something more awaited us than the renewal of old delights. Shortly before we started for our six months’ absence, we had decided, after much deliberation, to add, in a modest way, to the home that we had a thousand times declared, in our optimistic fashion, to be already ample for our needs; and the result was now before us. You may easily imagine our anxiety to discern if the decision had been wise or the reverse; for, though we had gone into the plan with a most competent architect to the utmost detail, and though Veronica had brought her practical and tasteful mind to bear upon window and overmantel, hinge and door-plate, moulding and lining-paper, there is always a danger lest instructions should have been misunderstood or imperfectly carried out, or that the instructions themselves were wholly or in part a mistake. We were prepared to be pleased, but also to criticise; but for fault-finding there was, in truth, no possible room. Animated by reverence for what already existed, we had bound architect and builder to certain well-defined lines and curves, prohibiting externally all originality save what is perhaps the best kind of it in these days, pious and humble reproduction of what is already recognised as beautiful. A room, which was originally spoken of as a billiard-room, and which for a brief while retained that designation, though all idea of having a billiard-table in it had been promptly abandoned, and which now is known as the Morning Room, because, as Lamia says, we nearly always sit there of an evening, a new boudoir for Veronica, who has at last a refuge of her own worthy of her beneficent labours, three new sleeping-chambers, and another staircase, composed the new quarter. And will you believe it?—it was already furnished; Veronica having made due preparations and given minute instructions for this end partly before our departure, and partly during our absence. Now, did she triumph over us in the matter of those various purchases in Florence that used to move our ignorant mirth; for everything she had acquired had been sent home in time to be unpacked and placed in the room and the position allotted to it. Thus, at every turn, we were reminded of the Fair City and the bewitching land we had so lately left, and of which, not to be ungrateful, we still talked affectionately even in the hours of our home-coming.

But Veronica had no monopoly of success in the swift adornment of our new wing. I, too, had a little triumph of my own, but, I need scarcely say, out-of-doors. I do not often sing my own praises, do I, preferring to extol the Poet and Veronica, who are more deserving of eulogy. But, on this occasion, I think I really did deserve the congratulations that were lavished on me. For, with a truly foreseeing mind, I had been growing on, to use a gardener’s phrase, a certain number of climbing roses, clematis, jessamine, and other creepers, and had given the strictest injunctions that they were to be planted against the new building the very instant the masons had finished it, and were to be fostered and trained with constant and unremitting attention; and, as they were then already robust in growth and vigorous at the root, they were well on their way up the new wing on our arrival. A legend has since grown up that I did not leave England at all, but remained on the spot with barrow, trug, and trowel, and that, fast as the work-people laid a course of stone or brick, I planted a creeper. But, as a fact, it happened as I have said.

As for the garden, the garden that the too kindly sympathy of others permits one to say we all love, I can only say I wish the whole of Italy could have seen it. The Tea Roses, more numerous and more beautiful than ever, seemed smilingly to say, ‘Has Tuscany roses to show more fair?’ Larkspurs, of every imaginable shade of blue, from azure to cerulean; lupines, white, purple, and yellow; foxgloves, snowy-white and without a freckle; seemed to challenge each other as to which would tower highest in the summer air. The Pæony Poppies, some purposely some accidentally sown, were a garden in themselves, fair but fugitive, yet making up by their number and infinite variety for the briefness of their existence. They were everywhere in the beds and borders, and, as it seemed, where they had chosen to be; there, by the right of supreme loveliness, and the Swan-neck Poppies, the Caucasian, and the Victoria Cross, rocked more humbly beside them. No other plant of such supreme beauty has so solid a stem and such imposing foliage for so fragile a flower; and this it is, I think, which mainly constitutes its fresh charm. Every one now loves flowers, and I have no need to weary you with a catalogue of those in the Garden that I Love. But I doubt if there be any perennial plant of real beauty and value that will grow in our latitude which is not to be found there; and I can say with truth, of every bed and border, that you could not see the ground for flowers. As for the winding turf walk, which perhaps you remember as the South Enclosure, it is not I who will say what it looked like when we returned. For one who has justly acquired honour, not only by the beauty of her own home, but by her charming pages concerning all that appertains to a garden, and who had visited it the day before our arrival, left a little line for Veronica, in which she generously said it was the loveliest she had ever seen. I should hesitate to repeat so flattering an opinion, were it not for some injustice to myself that followed. ‘As for the winding turf walk and its glow of bloom and colour on either side,’ said the kindly writer, ‘nowhere, I am sure, is there anything like it; and only the Poet could have conceived it.’ As if it was the Poet who had conceived it! It was I who,—but so it is in this unfair world, where everybody bows down before prestige. Lamia herself could not have been more partial or more unjust.

I made some observation of the kind to Veronica, imagining we were alone, and got for reply,—

‘My dear, you will never understand women.’

‘How is it possible,’ I asked, a little nettled by the implied rebuke, ‘when no two women are alike?’

‘No _one_ woman is alike,’ said Lamia, suddenly emerging from a luxuriance of leaf and flower that had concealed her from view; and, though Veronica was there to disprove the universal application of her aphorism, I think she spoke from the very depths of her own inner consciousness.

Not even the novelty of the fresh wing, though we kept returning to it again and again in the course of that to us memorable evening, could keep us indoors. Lilac, hawthorn, and laburnum had of course flowered and faded, and the glory of the rhododendrons was fast passing away. But the air was fragrant with the newly-made but yet uncarted hay; the scent of the elder was wafted from the lane; the smell of sweet-briar, with its profusion of little pink rosebuds, was everywhere in the garden; and we kept stopping ever and again to inhale the penetrating perfume of the freshly-opened tassels of the lime. Longer and darker grew the shadows on the lawn, then gradually drew themselves in, and vanished. The Tea Roses, no longer languid from the heat of the long summer day, lifted their fair faces freshened with evening dew; the streaks of crimson that point the pathway of departed days gradually faded from the west, and the lingering love-song of the missel-thrush at length came to end, absorbed into the general silence. It was twilight still, but a twilight slowly succumbing to the Midsummer night, if night it could be called to which the darkness never wholly came. Elsewhere, on shrub and sward the deepening dusk brought its beneficent tribute of abounding moisture; but, under the manifold foliage of the Oak, the ground retained the dryness of noon. Under its protecting canopy therefore, as many a time before, satisfied and silent we sate; till Lamia, moved by the influence of the hour, once again liberated her fresh young voice, and wedded to notes of almost austere simplicity the no less simple measure of this Vesper Hymn.

GOOD-NIGHT!

I

Good-night! Now dwindle wan and low The embers of the afterglow, And slowly over leaf and lawn Is twilight’s dewy curtain drawn. The slouching vixen leaves her lair, And, prowling, sniffs the tell-tale air. The frogs croak louder in the dyke, And all the trees seem dark alike: The bee is drowsing in the comb, The sharded beetle hath gone home: Good-night!

II

Good-night! The hawk is in his nest, And the last rook hath dropped to rest. There is no hum, no chirp, no bleat, No rustle in the meadow-sweet. The woodbine, somewhere out of sight, Sweetens the loneliness of night. The Sister Stars, that once were seven, Mourn for their missing mate in Heaven. The poppy’s fair frail petals close, The lily yet more languid grows, And dewy-dreamy droops the rose: Good-night!

III

Good-night! Caressing and caressed, The moist babe warms its mother’s breast. Silent are rustic loom and lathe; The scythe lies quiet as the swathe; The woodreeve blinks in covert shed, The weary yokel is abed, The covey warm beneath the wing, And sleep enfoldeth everything. Forsaken love, its last tear shed, On the lone pillow lays its head, And all our woes are respited: Good-night!

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.

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Transcriber’s note:

Obvious typographical errors have beencorrected silently . All other variations in hyphenation spelling and punctuation remain unchanged.

Colour plates are identified by their captions. The many illustrations without captions are black and white sketches of largely rural scenes. No attempt has been made to describe them.