Part 18

During a recent severe illness of hers, one of her nurses, whom she used to call her “ministering devil,” was very fond of entertaining her—at moments when the patient was too weak for speech—with the hopes which many eminent men of science now entertain of being able, some day, to get a bill passed permitting vivisection on the condemned criminal!

Why speak of such abominations in these pages dedicated to kind, happy days and sweet garden thoughts? Only for this reason—that it is the policy of ignoring, of cowardly turning away from unpleasant subjects, on the part of the great majority of the world that makes the thing possible at all.

* * * * *

One of the first orders we give a new gardener is that nothing is to be slain at Villino Loki except the Green Fly and the Rose-Beetle. The birds may devour all our buds, strip up our crocuses, and denude our raspberry canes ‹if they get a chance›. The mole may tunnel and burrow and raise his convulsive mounds in our most cherished lawn—and that is certainly a test of garden endurance—we will have no traps! As for the squirrels, we are afraid we have cleared too much in our wilderness to tempt them now. But one of the family actually bought little green tables in order to spread repasts for them near their favourite haunt.

In certain wild corners of Dorsetshire squirrels become almost familiars in such households as are kindly enough to set forth a dainty, now and again, for the frolicsome company. One understanding person of our acquaintance was given to spreading nuts on a certain window-sill, where every day the squirrels used to come and fetch them. One morning she was a little later than usual in this attention; on coming into the room, she was startled by a knocking on the window, and there on the sill sat a thing, all fur and bright eyes, knocking with its fairy paw! We think Loki has a good deal of the squirrel in him. There are no end of nice little beasts that Loki resembles. Sometimes we declare that he is least of all dog.

* * * * *

It is a wonder that people do not make more use of Broom in their Wild Gardens. We have seen a woodland path where great bushes of alternate white and yellow Plantagenista made riot in the sunshine; but it was too regular an arrangement to harmonize with scene. A wild garden, however cultivated secret, should grow as naturally as possible. It is a rather interesting experiment to fling the contents of a packet of wild flower seeds about one’s banks and unkept spaces. One forgets all about it; and, behold! after the second year, there are all kinds of engaging discoveries to be made: patches of grey-blue Campanulas, bold Foxgloves, Loose-strife, white Campions, all the more delightful because forgotten and unexpected and fitting into their surroundings as no amount of planting in can make them do. A giant Mullein has just made itself a home under the fir-trees and stands as if it had always been there, boldly and defiantly established in its proper place and determined to maintain it.

We caress the project of planting tall Ericas and Mediterranean Heaths on the borders of a certain rough path; and in between the Heather we shall make drifts of Colchicum, so that it may look lovely in all seasons. We do not consider that Colchicum is properly placed in the garden. Its summer leaf is too coarse, and it is hideous when it dies off. Mrs. Earle has made the same remark in one of her delightful books.

* * * * *

It will be very interesting to see how the new Roses turn out. A good many were ordered on the strength of the catalogue description, from three different rose growers. Hybrid Perpetuals do not do with us; neither do pure Teas stand our cold, otherwise we should riot in “Lady Hillingdon.”

“You never can go wrong with a Viscountess,” said his gardener to a friend of ours.

He was a man of lightning wit—as all lovers of “Savoy” operas know.

“That is a very interesting statement of yours,” he said in that brief, unsmiling manner that added zest to his quaintness. “I have been given to understand the contrary.”

We can go wrong with a Viscountess, unfortunately, and do. As we have said, Hybrid Perpetuals do not behave well with us, except, perhaps, that model of excellence, Ulrich Brunner.—Morals are a question of climate even with roses.

Loki’s Ma-Ma ‹to be discursive—and we are afraid that this chronicle is nothing if not discursive› was a great favourite with this genius of mirth above mentioned, who made the world ring with honest laughter and whose heroic death brought many tears, at least to Villino Loki. He used to call her “his little Lemur” because she had a way of clinging to her mother, in her first debutante days.

Never was there a man so tender-hearted. On his estate no wild thing was to be robbed of its life: not even a rabbit. Loki’s Grandmother used to be a little timid in his company, because of this gift of swift humour. She never felt able to meet him on his own ground—except once when in a windy June he told her that he had begun to take his daily swim in the lake, and she shuddered at the thought.

“Cold!” he cried, “not a bit of it! Delightful! You shall take a dip with me when next you come to us.”

“No,” she retorted—and it was the only time in all their pleasant intercourse that she was ever brave enough to make a pass with him—“No, I had rather get into hot water with you.”

Alas, alas! That lake! We felt the menace of it even then. It was there, trying to save another, he found his death.

It has often been said that real wit is a thing of the past. Certainly the younger generation’s idea of pleasantry is a kind of rough-and-tumble fight as compared to the neat, delicate thrust-play of an older world. But this friend of ours had a gift quite apart, a mixture of humour, wit and satire, something dry, comic, quaint, peculiarly his own.

“It reminds me,” said a clever relation of his once in our hearing, “of an old wood carving.”

We understood what he meant; the odd angles, the sharp turns, the simplicity, the brusque sincerity—and withal how richly genial!

In a single instance one of us beheld him almost meet his match, and that in a most unexpected manner. The pretty fairy lady, his wife, happened to comment with surprise upon the fact that a woman who had been very rude to her should have attempted to greet her upon a recent occasion as if nothing had happened.

“She actually held out her hand!” she concluded.

“Well, my dear,” observed her lord, in his serious way, “that is the member most usually extended.”

To the surprise of the whole table, a shy lady on his left, who had not yet uttered a word, said in a small meek voice: “She might have put out her tongue!”

We never met that shy woman again. We should like to. “Please will you keep your Pickle out of my preserves,” he wrote to a neighbour whose dog was given to roving. The neighbour bore a name well known in grocers’ lists.

* * * * *