Part 44

In fact we all become like children again at Christmas; and this, after all, cannot be displeasing to the Christ Child. It is a time of hectic preparation, of pleasurable brain-racking over the suitability of gifts; of endless tying up of parcels for foreign and home dispatch. We decorate the Villino with round compact Holly-wreaths, which Adam makes with rare raste and adroitness. Never was such a year as the last for Hollies; and some of the trees were still scarlet with them in the late Spring.

As for Juvenal, he shows a recrudescence of genius in the devising of table decoration with unthought-of evergreens; with rich-toned leaves in the sear and the brown and purpling hues of Winter, brightened with an astonishing variety of haws, hips, and berries.

In the little Chapel a crib is built up in a stone manger brought from Rome. Therein lies the Italian Bambino, purchased two generations ago by a dear one who has now gone from us. It is the quaintest little wax figure imaginable, with its painted red curls and one wax foot uplifted in the act of kicking.—The story goes that the original much venerated image in a certain Roman church, the object of yearly pilgrimages, was purloined, or for some reason moved to another Church, to the woe and indignation of the faithful of the district. But on the first Christmas night after this translation, a loud knocking was heard at the door of the original Church, and the small figure was discovered, kicking with all its might for re-admittance. Captured and carried in with devotion and joy, it was re-established with much pomp in its old quarters, but ever after remained with a little kicking leg in the air!

Our Crib, surrounded with Roman Hyacinths and White Narcissus and Primulas, is fragrant and poetic; but we do not attempt to show anything more than the one image. Want of space prevents it. Our ambition, however, finds larger scope in the village Chapel. There Juvenal has built a very noble stable, thatched with heather; and all the figures of those first scenes of the Greatest Story in the World will take their place this year.

Last year the tragedy happened that the St. Joseph and Our Lady; the Ox and the Ass; the Kings and Shepherds, which had been ordered in secret to surprise every one, remained on the high seas detained by December gales, until too late.—But our coming Noel will be the richer for the enforced postponement of the Holy Picture.

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At the last Yuletide the Mistress of Villino was unable, after a long year’s illness, to join the family party at Midnight Mass in the village below the hill. ‹Midnight Mass, be it noted in parenthesis, has an extraordinary charm for the household and indeed for the neighbourhood. And, when all is said and done, it certainly is as picturesque and touching a ceremony as ever men of goodwill are happy to join in. It seems to bring one in direct touch with the simplicity of the shepherds of those far-off hills.› But as the excluded padrona was lying quietly in bed waiting for the sounds of departure, she was touched and charmed to hear the strains of a carol rising softly from the terrace beneath her windows:

See amid the winter’s snow, Born for us on earth below, See, the tender Lamb appears, Promised from eternal years!

Hail, thou ever blessed morn! Hail, Redemption’s happy dawn! Sing, through all Jerusalem, Christ is born in Bethlehem!

Lo, within a manger lies He Who built the starry skies; He, Who throned in heights sublime Sits amid the Cherubim!

All the household had gathered there to give her this pleasure and make her feel that she was not altogether shut out from the Christmas privileges! Wrapped in their thick cloaks, with Juvenal swinging a lantern, they stood in a long row and chanted to her. It was one of those small sweetnesses in life that leave a lasting memory.

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There is a picture in a garden paper of Japanese single Asters growing wild in grass: the seeds had been mixed by mistake, but the result, according to the illustration, was singularly attractive. When we saw it we said that the experiment should be made at Villino Loki!—Many indeed are the experiments, many the improvements to be made within our small acres.

But what a difference lies between conception and execution. Of late ‹for an instance› we had revolved round the agreeable thought of a Pool and a wet place generally, for Iris Kæmpheri, Spiræa and other moisture-loving darlings. We had indeed intended something altogether choice in the shape of a large sunken basin with a piping faun on the edge of it. Oh, something quite delightful.... But an inconvenient attack of “conscience”—in other words the heavy memory of garden bills, already incurred over the Autumn lists, rose up and barred the way. We felt something like Scrooge when the ghost with the bony finger ‹horrible vision of our youth› pointed to the tomb. Only, on our tablet what was written was the ghastly total of our bulbous liabilities! Like Scrooge, we covered our faces with our hands. No wonder the faun took fright and leaped into next year.

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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.

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?

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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.