Part 16

We have made a vast improvement these days by turfing most of the walks, and we now look out on a delicious sweep of green. The Lily Border and its opposite neighbour, the tongue of land with the Buddleia trees and shrubs, look infinitely more attractive thus set into the verdure. Great clumps of yellow Polyanthuses and self-sown Forget-me-nots make it gay while we are waiting for the Narcissus Poeticus, the Poppies, the Lilies and other joys to break upon us. The field of mixed Narcissus under the trees is going to be one sheet of blossom in a few days, blown about, though they be, poor darlings, by these fierce and cruel winds. The papers are full of exclamations over “winter in April”: so far our high-pitched garden has stood it well. This is the advantage, we suppose, of its natural backwardness.

We are now fired with the desire to turf the Dutch Garden; the path under the second terrace, i.e. Blue Border, and also the path leading from the Bowling Green, so that we shall look down on a succession of green levels, each with its wealth of flowers. We want to make the whole little place shine like a jewel out of the rough setting of the moor.

Talk of the zest of gambling! ’Tis impossible that it could more possess the soul in defiance of purse and prudence than the garden mania. If Loki’s Grandmother had hold of a cheque book ‹which she hasn’t› she is afraid the family substance would flow away from month to month into bulbs and blossoms, tubers and saxifrages, clumps and climbers; not to speak of such prosaic but necessary accompaniments as loam, manures, lawn-mixtures and “vaporisers.” She would build at least two new greenhouses and double her garden staff. And perhaps after all she wouldn’t be half as happy as she is. For she might be led into “named novelties,” and garden rivalries, and splendours of artificial rockeries where in the centre of vast beds of slag some microscopic curiosity no larger than a spider would spread a fairy claw in the shadow of a monstrous label. Perhaps she might be bitten with an unwholesome passion for Orchids, and spend the portion of her only child, and all the fur grandchildren, on the devilish attractions of those plants which are, we are convinced, flowers of evil.

Just now her last extravagance has been to order three and six worth of White Honesty at ninepence a dozen, to plant in among the new Rhododendrons; and she is suffused with satisfaction at the prospect of anything so cheap and charming. We recommend the effect, discovered quite accidentally.

* * * * *

We have really abominable weather. It is very unusual.

“Oh, to be in England, Now that April’s there!”

is an aspiration justified as a rule by a tender interlude between the tantrums of March and the asperities of May. Last year April came in skipping like a kid on the Campagna, even its freakishness full of attraction. Is anything more charming than to see the kids playing among the flocks, as one drives along those roads of haunting and mysterious beauty—under that sky incomparable in its gem-like purity; to see the shepherd in his sheepskin seated on a fence with his legs cross-bandaged, the shrill pipe to his lips; to hear his wild strain and know that it was all just the same a thousand years ago and more? The kids, as they leap out of the scattered flocks, are cut against the blue as on some classic frieze; the tawny, melancholy plain falls and rises and falls again till the hills amethystine, snow-capped, close the field of vision in the far distance! The broken line of an aqueduct gleams as if golden.

“To be in Italy, Now that April’s there!”

Loki’s Grandmother believes she would give up her country and Villino Loki, and expatriate herself for ever gladly. But Italy is not expatriation, it is the home of the soul. ‹Loki’s Grandpa says he quite admits all that—but that for a permanency he prefers his Surrey hills.›

The fires on the Campagna are rose-carmine as the pointed flames pulsate upwards. Our fires here are only just the usual yellows. Where is it that Italy holds the secret? Is it in the translucence of the atmosphere? How the sunlight there lies on a common plaster wall! How the stone flushes! Just a little white Villino on a hill-side stands in a radiance of its own, and is not white at all but topaz coloured!

* * * * *

To-day, the fifteenth of April, has been as grey and bleaching a day here as we never wish to meet again. Even the spears of the Narcissus are bruised and drooping.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XVIII

Mrs. Mutton, poor soul, has had a dead infant. It is perhaps scarcely to be wondered at, as she had another encounter with the water-butt shortly before the event; but she is as much “taken-to” as if she had been hoping to bring an heir-apparent into a realm of splendour. The doctor, to console her, asked her hadn’t she plenty already.

“I did think it unkind of him, Miss! It does seem ’ard! I did so seem to long for this one to live!”

We had a confidential conversation with the experienced matron who was ministering to her, and we mentioned the water-butt with some severity. But Mrs. Tosher would have none of this. Hers is a large mind philosophy:

“Ho! well, you see, Miss, it’s just as it takes them. I don’t say as Mutton isn’t a bit fond of his glass; but after all, Miss,” she smiled indulgently, “you must remember he was a bit upset-like. It isn’t as if there ’adn’t been a reason. When ’e ’eard there was going to be another, it turned ’im against ’er. Of course, poor feller! That was only to be expected like—”

“Good Heavens!”

Mrs. Tosher smiled more broadly than ever at our innocence.

“Some men do take it very ’ard!”

Words failed us. We could not reason upon such a point of view.

At the bottom of the garden the “little cot,” as Mrs. Adam calls it, which she and her husband have made so pretty, has been the scene of a similar domestic event which makes the contrast still more poignant. A little Eve, in fact, has been born into our small garden of Eden. She has received a joyful welcome. That most attractive child, black-eyed Adam Junior, with the mysterious intuition of childhood had recently been bombarding heaven for a little sister. He is now thrilled and triumphant at the success of his prayers. We personally are quite pleased with the addition to the famiglia.

We wonder whether it is because of the Italian atmosphere that has so unaccountably descended on Villino Loki that we and our establishment are really falling into relations not unlike those which so happily subsist between master and servant in Italy. The Master is not master, but Father-in-chief; the servant are not servants, but members of his family—the famiglia.

We were afraid our last winter in Rome had spoilt us for English ways. We had a delightful famiglia there. Fioravanti di Rienzo, the pearl of cooks; Camillo Lanti, the clever, busy, and quite reasonably peculating butler; and Aristide ‹surname unknown›, the superb coachman, all begged with tears to come back to England with us.

“Take but a postcard,” cried Camillo, “and write upon it ‘Camillo, come,’ and instantly I start.”

“Will ever anyone drive the Excellencies as I drive them?” Aristide demanded. “I would learn the ways of Londra in a day—two days. To learn the ways of Londra, that would be nothing; but to drive another family, that I feel I cannot ever again!”