Part 19
Well, now, another year has come; and it is passing, taking us upon yet another round of garden pleasures, of old hopes and ambitions renewed—with many new delights and new disappointments, as of old; with also fresh openings on the bright horizon. New interests too. Of these, some of the smaller are not the least engrossing. To Villino Loki this year, for example, has come a new Pekinese. It is a Princess, very small, very sleek; chestnut-hued, with a face like a pansy. She has got a little jutting under-jaw, an extremely flat nose; and, in moments of excitement, her eyes display an amazing amount of white rim. But they are becoming very beautiful eyes for all that. They were the brightest of “boot-buttons” when she came first.
Loki was, naturally, very angry. He did his best to kill her; which was ungrateful, as she was really procured, at great cost and difficulty, to be his Imperial Bride! She, on her side, liked him awfully, and told him so. On her first motor drive down here from London, as she waggled and smirked at him from an opposite lap, he sat on his Ma-Ma’s knee and pulled a series of grimaces in return, the like of which you can only find painted on Chinese screens or cast in Chinese bronze.
[Sidenote: THE NEW PEKY]
The ways of the new Peky are an endless source of amusement and joy. We tried to call her Mimosa; but, as usual with the youngest of the family, she remains “Baby.”
She has a coat the colour of a ripe chestnut, which will, we think, almost rival Loki’s in luxuriance. Her eyes have the same proportion to her face as those of a Dicky Doyle fairy. She has the oddest tastes, loving among many other unexpected things the flavour of tobacco. If she can get hold of a pipe or a cigarette she will sit and suck it, sniffing with enchantment, till one would swear she was smoking.
All the dogs, of course, have their coffee after lunch and dinner in orthodox fashion, so there is nothing astounding in her having taken to it with gusto from the very first—but, for her, the stronger the better!
Like most Pekies, she begs and “prays” without ever having had to be taught the art. She has furthermore a talent quite her own—that of elaborately waltzing in front of you when she wants anything very particularly.
One of the dearest peculiarities of the breed is, as we have said, the rapture of their welcome on the return of any member of the family. The Master of the House is sensitive to this attention, and is quite hurt if he misses Loki’s clamorous greeting. The other day “the Baby” was sent into the Hall to meet him on his home-coming. No sooner did he appear than she solemnly began her dance and preceded him as he advanced, conscientiously executing her finest _pas de fascination_. This consists of leaping into the air, turning round upon herself, and coming down on to her front paws. Little Eastern as she is, she knew no better way of expressing her feelings towards “the Master.”
From what far ancestress, bred in the secret sinister splendours of a Manchu Palace, did she inherit this accomplishment?
XLII
It is the dream of the owners of Villino Loki to build on another wing; but, so far, funds do not run to this. The Villino is sadly short of guest chambers; that is because one room has been for ever allotted to the little Oratory.
This little Chapel is a haven of peace. One’s thoughts turn to it when one has the misfortune to be away from home. Over the altar there hangs a large, wonderfully beautiful crucifix. The figure, white majolica, was bought in a villainous den of a curiosity shop on the Tiber. We remember how it shone out of the darkness at us, and we felt it _had_ to be ours! It is now affixed to a large gilt carved wood cross made for us by the _doratore_ in _Piazza Nicosia_.... Excellent ruffian! The cross has one arm much longer than the other, though no one would know it who did not measure; and it has the inimitable stamp of the artistic hand bound by no slavish measure or hideous time-saving mechanism.
The Chapel is chiefly white and gold. Two large Donatello angels, warm ivory-coloured, from the _Manifattura di Signa_, carry the red Sanctuary lamps. One is certainly the real Donatello—the other, we fear, a poor foundling. But they both look very well.
There is a great window over the moor.
The few small statues are, we think, attractive; chiefly decorated with bronzy golds and deep colours. There is St. Louis, King of France, specially carved by a Bavarian artist; a slender noble figure with a face of grave asceticism, holding up the Crown of Thorns. And there is a sternly warlike St. Michael, all golden, resting on his sword. And a St. Anthony ‹a real discovery this› lifting a pale countenance that seems on fire with ardour towards the Divine Infant who stands on his book—St. Anthony is “in glory”; his habit golden over the brown. St. George, a fine splash of colour, charges the dragon over the fireplace. It is a most satisfying dragon with red jaws open and a green claw tearing at the lance that has conquered him. St. George’s iron-grey horse, with flowing crimson trappings, starts aside and rolls a distraught eye—as well he might. It is all in plaster and in rather deep relief. Two tall golden wood-carved Roman church candlesticks flank it on either side, fitted with electric light.
We have placed square Compton pots with Italian wreaths, filled with palms and flowering plants, one on each side of the altar step.
At night, when there is no light in the Oratory, except that of the Sanctuary lamps, the shadows of the palms look like angels’ wings, crossing and re-crossing....
* * * * *
But, just as to a Garden there is no end—no end to its wants or to our desires for it; to its phases, its transmutation surprises; to our joys and disappointments in it—so there is no end to a Garden and Country House gossip. We might go on for ever—like Tennyson’s Brook! And meanwhile the year is passing on, in its stately pomp.
[Sidenote: SUMMER ONCE MORE ... AND AFTER]
Full Summer is once more upon the Garden. The Delphiniums are rampant. We are in the centre of a heat wave, and our dry hill-side pants in the sun. At the fall of eve our souls rejoice in the sound of the refreshing showers when the watering begins; for one thirsts sympathetically with the cherished borders....
The moor is deepening to purple. The trees wear the deep green that precedes the turn. Life is rushing by with us so quickly that it seems but the “blink of an eye,” as the Germans say, since we were peering for the first bulb shoot.... In a little while the Ramblers and Wichurianas will be one blaze of glory; and in a little while again the Autumn winds will be shouting up the valley and the Bracken turning gold over the rolling hills; and again in a little while again it will be the Winter and the snow and we shall be watching for the Spring.
And it will be all even as before and yet all quite different. And so year by year.... And one day our garden will bloom for other eyes than ours.
_Nunc tibi—mox aliis_, the Book-Lover’s motto has it. How true also of the beloved Garden!... Another “eye-blink.”