Part 2

Over the hills and far away, In every rose a dream we prize, While thousand tender memories Flutter about the lilac-spray; To-day, to-morrow, yesterday— Each unto each make glad replies; Over the hills and far away, Over the hills.

ELINOR SWEETMAN

Never was trifling chronicle begun so light-heartedly as this chatty, idly reminiscent book of ours—and now it is under the great shadow of war, of death and suffering, that we see it pass into its final shape!

The “little paradise on the hill,” with all its innocent pleasures, its everyday joys and cares; with the antics of the “little furry things at play,” the sayings and doings of the “famiglia”; the roses, the bulbs and seedlings; our alluring garden plans, our small despairs and unexpected blisses—our earthly paradise, as we have said, seems like an unreal place. We wander through it with spirit ill at ease; oppressed, as by a curse, through no fault of ours. The sight of an Autumn Catalogue (hitherto so tempting, so full of promised joys) evokes only a sigh. The offer, from the familiar Dutchman, of bulbs which “it will help Belgium if we buy,” turns the heart sick. We know we must not buy bulbs, this year, because we shall have to buy bread—bread for those who will surely lack it—and yet, if we do not buy, others in their turn must needs go wanting. And here is but the merest drop in the monstrous tide of evils wantonly let loose upon humanity by the self-styled Attila! There are times when, looking out upon our place of peace, we feel as though, surely, we must all be lost in some fantastic nightmare. It is a September full of golden sunshine; as this night falls, a benign, placid moon rises over the silent moors into a sky the colour of spun-glass. The breeze choirs softly through the boughs of scented Larch and Birch. All is beauty, harmony—while in those fields yonder, south of the sea, the Huns.... Pray God, by the time the Spring begins to stir shyly once more in our copses; what time the Crocus pushes forth its little tender flame, and the Snowdrop (with us fugitive and reluctant) bends its timorous head under our hill-top winds, we may indeed look back upon these days as upon some dreadful dream!

Meanwhile—even as the Villino itself is now to become a home of convalescence for some of our wounded, still unknown, but to be welcomed soon; even as the Cottage is to be a refuge for women and babes fled from burning Belgian hamlets—the following pages, breathing content and all the harmless ways of life, may perchance help to beguile thoughts surfeited with tales and pictures of mortal strife. We hope that, as a sprig of Lavender, or a Cowslip, by his pillow might for a moment relieve the blood-tinted vision of a stricken soldier, so, perhaps, some unquiet heart labouring under the strain of long-drawn suspense, will find a passing relaxation, a forgotten smile, in the company of Loki and his companions.

Sept. 1914

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR

THE HEMICYCLE Frontispiece THE DUTCH GARDEN To face page 16 THE BEECH ” ” 142 SUMMER ” ” 150 THE MOOR ” ” 208 AUTUMN ” ” 234 THE HOLLY TREE ” ” 272 WINTER ” ” 292

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OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN

It is easier to begin with our beasts.—First, they are much the most important, and secondly, there are only six of them. Our bulbs lie in their thousands with just a green nose showing here and there now in January and are nameless things: only collectively dear, if extraordinarily so.

It will instantly be perceived what kind of gardeners we are, and what kind of garden we keep. We have scarcely a single plant of “individuality.” We do not spend ten guineas on a jonquil bulb, nor fifteen on a peony. To our mind no flower can be common: therefore we lavish our resources on quantity. I was going to say: not quality, but that is where, in our opinion, the modern kind of garden-maker goes wrong. What is in a name? Where flowers are concerned, nothing! But how much, what treasures of joy and colour, of shade and exquisite texture, of general blessedness in fact, lurk in the beloved crowd of the nameless things, that come to us designated only thus: “Best mixed Darwin Tulips”; “Blue bedding Hyacinths”; “Single Jonquils, best mixed,” and so on! We once descended so far as to order “a hundred mixed Delphiniums at 10s.,” and when, last June, we looked down on a certain bed in the Reserve Garden from the seat under The Beech Tree ‹which commands that enthralling spot› and saw the blue battalion glowing with enamel colours draw up against the moor beyond, we felt not at all ashamed of ourselves—yea, we felt conceitedly pleased.

* * * * *

But our beasts are individual indeed; and, as it was said, there are only six of them.

The first in order of importance is the Pekinese, who, purchased at a moment when we were much under the enchantment of the “Ring,” we ineptly—yet, from the ethnological standpoint, not altogether inappropriately—called Loki: his coat is fiery red, and he is an adept at deceit. When we want to impress strangers we hastily explain that he is Mo-Loki, son of the great Mo-Choki, the celebrated champion. Loki ‹who frequently assures us that he was a Lion, in Pekin› was born on the roof of the Imperial Palace in High Street, Kensington. His appearance and behaviour are such as bear testimony to his princely lineage. We let him run a great deal when he was a puppy, with the result that his legs are a little longer than is usual with members of the Imperial Dynasty, but “Grandpa”—Stop! It is as well to explain from the outset that, since the advent of Loki in the family, Grandpa is the name that has devolved, automatically, upon the Master of the House: the infant Loki’s mistress having assumed, from the very necessity of things, the post and responsibility of mother ‹in Pekinese ma-ma›, it must follow as the night the day that her father “illico” became Grandpa.—To resume: though his legs are a trifle longer than is usual, the Master of the House says he is much more beautiful by reason of this distinction. And we all agree with him.

Loki will not believe that the Manchu masters have fallen in China ‹of course it is not from us that he has heard these distressing rumours›, so he still demands as his right the best silk eiderdowns to lie upon, satin for his cushions, grilled kidney for his breakfast, freshly poured water in his bowl every time he wants to drink; and expects immediate attention at lunch and dinner-time, play-time, “bye-bye” time, and all the other times when he thinks he would like his chest rubbed. He sits up and waves his paws with imperious gesture; or else rolls over on his back and puts them together in an attitude of prayer. He had not at first much oriental calm about him. Indeed, when he first came to us his one desire was to play with every living thing he saw, from a cow to a chicken; but the cow misunderstood and ran at him, and the chicken misunderstood and ran away. The poor puppy was perplexed and wounded. He always believed every new Teddy bear toy to be alive at first, and would receive it in a rapture of tail-wagging and nuzzling kisses, until what time, it dawning upon him that Teddy was a senseless fraud, he set himself to shake and worry it like a little fury. Now he is older and wiser. He pretends not to see cows, and condemns chickens; he will growl at a strange dog, and bite and shake a new toy the very first day. Thus, alas, do years make a cynic of the young idealist!

He only plays with his own animals. These are: Susan, the Butler’s dog, and Arabella, the Lavroch setter, a long, lovely, lithe, foolish creature, whose surname is Stewart, having come to Villino Loki out of far Scotland from a distinguished member of that Royal clan. Arabella, who is ten times the size of Loki, turns him over and over, tramples on him, nibbles and licks him till he is unspeakable. He will leap at her nose, hang on to one of her long flapping ears, race up and down the slopes and round and round the green terraces, till they both collapse, and their tongues hang out of their laughing mouths, seeming to flicker with their panting breath, and become as long as the tongues of dragons on old manuscripts.

A matter to be noticed is that they never play in their walks with us across the moors—apparently that is against dog etiquette—but they will lie in wait for each other at the garden gate on the way home, and the fun and the pouncing and growling jocosities begin the instant they are inside.

Susan doesn’t play with the other animals, though she exercises an irresistible fascination upon every dog that comes within a mile of her. She has a kind of Jane Eyre charm, we suppose, for it is not at first visible to the naked eye. She always does remind us of a small elderly German governess, for she is squat, undemonstrative, and eminently—oh, eminently!—respectable. She is a fox-terrier. She has, however, one terrible weakness. Her only joy is to have stones thrown for her. She is not, therefore, an agreeable person to take out for a walk, for she will get right under your feet, dig up a stone, point at it, and bark, “Throw, throw!” with a shrill persistence that goes through your head. And if you are weak-minded enough to yield, then indeed you are undone. You will be kept throwing till you wish her in the Dog Star. She will scratch up stones till her paws are raw. This we think a great defect, but Loki sees no flaw in her.

* * * * *

When Susan’s Butler first came to us, we had suffered acutely from butlers young and butlers old, butlers bashful and butlers bold—all of whom drank steadily. One nearly murdered his Buttons. Another, engaged by correspondence, vouched for by the agency, announcing his years as forty-five, arrived huge, decrepit, asthmatic; almost, if not quite, qualified for an old-age pension. The eight o’clock dinner he found it impossible to serve before nine; and then that ceremony became a perfect torture of dazed crawling, enlivened by stertorous breathing, for which asthma and chronic alcoholism disputed responsibility. When the Master of the House, who is very tender-hearted, intimated that he thought that, for the good of the newcomer’s health, they had better part with the utmost celerity, the veteran assented resignedly with the husky gasp peculiar to him.

“You know,” said the Master of the House, mildly, “you are not quite what you represented yourself to be. You said you were forty-five!”

“I think,” wheezed the Ancient Cellarer; “I think I said forty-seven, sir.”

“Oh, forty-seven!” The Master of the House was a little satiric. “Even if you had said forty-seven, you are a great, great deal more than that!”

“Sir,” said the delinquent, with a beery twinkle, “no butler can ever be more than forty-seven.”

This, we understand, is a maxim of life in the profession.