[Illustration: dog looking outside at rain]
[Sidenote: MORE BLACK SHEEP]
This July, not remarkable for anything but rain and dark skies, has
produced a perfect outbreak of wickedness in the village. Our black
sheep have turned into tigers without even the excuse of torrid weather
to inflame their passions. But, indeed, the public house is always ready
to supply the stimulant necessary for driving average humanity into
brutal and insane crime.
Caliban, whom the reader may remember as having once worked in our
Fortunate Island, and always looking as if he had just risen from
all-fours, has, in our recent absence, thrown away all pretence at
humanity once and for all. Though, indeed, why should the poor beasts,
who generally make excellent fathers and husbands, be compared to the
type of man that deliberately ruins his home? To batter your wife,
terrorize your children, to squander your substance for an indulgence
which ultimately destroys your health, is a mystery of perversity
reserved for the superior being.
Anyway, Caliban, having drifted from place to place, and lost his last
chance of employment in this district by killing a whole hot-house full
of Tomatoes through drunken neglect “on” the local market gardener, as
we should say in Ireland, finally locked his wife and children out of
the little cottage, and shut himself in with his drunkenness in company
with his aged but not less drunken parent. The power of thought having
returned in the morning, the precious pair put their boosy heads
together and sold the furniture, possessed themselves of every available
valuable, even of Mrs. Caliban’s solitary trinket, and decamped together
from the district!
Mrs. Caliban, with an infant in arms and two little girls at her skirts,
has now set to work to earn enough for all. She is a valiant woman; and
no doubt when she has succeeded fairly well, Caliban will return to
repeat the process. She is very anxious for a separation, but cannot
accomplish this, as the whereabouts of her lord and master are unknown.
* * * * *
She is less fortunate than the wife of Black Sheep No. 2. Last Saturday
we were peacefully entertaining a couple of week-end visitors, when poor
Mrs. Mutton crawled into our garden to “see the young lady.” The
water-butt myth was cast to the winds. She had a black eye and a
dislocated thumb, and informed us that Mutton had threatened to “do for
her,” and that she was going in fear of her life. “When not drunk,” she
remarked with the apathy of despair, “I think he’s mad!”
Mutton is well known in the district for his playful ways, and no one
would consent to house his wife but an enterprising barber: on the
condition, however, that Mutton did not come after her. The poor thing
shivered and shook, and avowed that she could not return and pass
another hour in such terrors. When she heard his step, she told us, a
trembling would seize her.
“You ladies,” she said, rolling her hopeless eyes from one sympathetic
listener to another, “can have no idea of the kind of life poor women
like us lead!”
[Sidenote: COUNTY POLICE METHODS]
Little Jimmy Mutton and she had spent the previous night out under fear
of a gun, which Black Sheep _père_ had taken to bed with him, with
threats of instant use. The first idea of the owners of Villino Loki was
that the woman should have protection; and here the drama took a
Gilbertian form with a dash of nightmare. Her cottage being on the
borders of another county, no policeman nearer than nine miles off had
the right to intervene. In vain did “the young lady,” attended by the
two week-end visitors, start off for the nearest magistrate and lay the
case before him. Mrs. Mutton must betake herself to that far county
town, by what means she best might; and if she and her poor lambs were
“done for” between this and then, it would all be within the strict
limits of the law as far as the magistrate was concerned. With fruitless
eloquence were the perils of the situation painted in their blackest
colours. Mutton, as we have said, was famous, and like Habacuc in
Voltaire’s estimation, might be _capable de tout_.
Could not the local policeman take possession of the gun?
Impossible. No policeman nearer than Paddockstown could lay a finger on
it.
Could not at least the village Bobby keep an eye on the house where the
enterprising barber had taken in the refugees?
The Magistrate smiled at such ignorance of the law. All orders must come
from Paddockstown.
“That,” remarked one of the week-end visitors as the discomfited party
shook the Magistrate’s dust off their feet, “that seems a futile old
gentleman!”
This week-end visitor had an emphatic manner of speech, which afforded
the only relief in the exasperation of the atmosphere.
However, the affair managed to straighten itself out on, again, true
Gilbertian lines. Mrs. Mutton duly found a motor-bus to convey her to
Paddockstown; and there, with all the proper formality, interviewed the
Magistrate and a lawyer, with the help of whom she was separated from
her obstreperous Mutton. Little Jimmy gave evidence, Mutton was advised
by his lawyer not to defend the case. She has now appropriately joined
forces with Mrs. Caliban and is enjoying a time of peace which we trust
may not be merely an interlude.
“Oh, Miss!” she cried, describing these unwonted sensations, “I’m that
overjoiced, I’m afraid it’s hardly right!”
As the husband is hovering about the roads, waylaying all concerned with
alarming politeness, we are a little anxious. We know that he is still
_mouton enragé_ at heart; and we do not know if in spite of the mandate
from Paddockstown the local police would be allowed to interfere were
gun or table knife to be put into requisition.
The Dorothy Perkins are coming out, showing a most glorious kind of fire
rose, which hitherto they only displayed in the autumn after a touch of
frost. Combined with the delicate sprays of the Ceanothus Gloire de
Versailles, they make in a tall glass vase as pretty a harmony as we
know.
[Illustration: rose garden]
[Sidenote: THE NEW ROSARY]
The new Rose Garden promises complete success. Caroline Testout is
coming out, fat and pink and smiling in her usual good-humoured
profusion. We have a great bed in the shape of a Maltese cross in the
middle of a stretch of turf in this new Rose Garden, and the other three
beds are filled respectively with Madame Abel Châtenay; mixed yellow
roses, among which are Betty, Lady Hillingdon, and Juliet, are specially
successful; and another deep pink charmer named Madame Jules Groles. She
has not yet come out. The centre bed is devoted to General MacArthur,
with a Crimson Rambler pillar.
The Climbing Roses against the arches that bound this rose-lawn north
and south are growing bravely; and we have lost our hearts to May Queen
with its mass of bright pink flowers, which, combined with the fainter,
creamier pinks of Paul Transon, make such a delicious bouquet of bloom,
all on the same pillar.
The hedge of Penzance Briars, though only a couple of feet above the
ground as yet, has thrown out long lines of starry blossoms, shading
from faint primrose to deepest crimson, with intermediate constellations
of pinks and carmines that out-do both Dorothy Perkins and Zephyrine
Drouhin.
The new Rose Garden is shut off on the west by a fir-tree avenue, and we
are trying to coax white and red Wichurianas up the stems, in spite of
all expert pessimism. Marquise de Sinety is a delicate, warmly tinted,
pinky cream Rose. Catalogues, no doubt, would call her “salmon”; but it
is such a horrid word that we prefer to present the picture under
another aspect.
* * * * *
Do not let anyone subject to the watery caprices of an English climate
place their trust in Maman Cochet! Her heavy bud becomes hopelessly
sodden after anything like a shower. One can conceive that this dowager
would be a handsome enough object in a southern garden, or that she
would be a good greenhouse rose; but, like many another, she does not
bear adversity.
Handsome, bland Caroline Testout keeps up her self-contained smile
unimpaired in fair and foul weather; “fat-faced Puss” that she is, a
very Gioconda among roses, even to the close folding of her plump
leaves, which remind one of that overrated charmer’s compact hands. It
would take a good deal to shake her equanimity; scentless, soulless
beauty!
The Lyons Rose has burst on us this year in all its splendour, a most
successful combination of pink and gold. The sunset glow seems to shine
through the petals.
These efforts at producing new effects are not always successful, some
having a very patchy appearance, to our mind. As for the Austrian Briar,
Soleil d’Or, it is more like a blood-orange cut in two than anything
else, in colour, shape, and pulpy texture. From a distance the bright
circles look attractive, but we should recommend it to no one who values
delicacy in their blooms.
A great success are the Weeping Standards Stella. Though it is their
first year, the branches are covered with lovely tinted blossoms; and
what is more, these are lasting. Single carmine stars are they, with
golden centres and a scent of musk.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: FLOWERING TIMES AND PLANS]
The mistress of the Villino, a foolish and impetuous person, has three
times made the same mistake and omitted to ascertain the blooming season
of plants which she wished to be in beauty together. So the four Weeping
Standards Stella, are considerably in advance of the four Dorothys which
alternate with them; and the standards Soleil d’Or were quite over
before the Conrad Meyers appeared in the Lily Walk; and the contrast of
pink and yellow was what had been aimed at!
In the same manner she had intended the Garland Roses to foam up in two
splendid white pillars at each end of the long length of Dorothy Perkins
at the opposite side of the Blue Border terrace. Of course the Garland
is becoming unsightly before the fire-pink of the Dorothy begins to show
in any profusion.
* * * * *
The garden—except on the upper terrace, which with Heliotrope, Lobelia,
and the climbing Ceanothus keeps to the faint cool blues, untroubled by
the efflorescence of the White Pet ‹which, by the way, has completely
eaten out Perle des Rouges› and the very faint pink of the Ivy-Leaf
Geraniums—except for the upper terrace, the garden, we say, is growing
pink. What with the Verbenas and the Red Roses and the cheery coloured
Ivy-Leaf Geranium called Jersey Beauty, in the Dutch garden, and the
general ramp of Dorothy everywhere, it is a mass of pink.
Another year we must have more Penstemons. They are charming things, and
as good as they are beautiful. In a garden nothing is beautiful that is
not good, which is another facet of its likeness to Paradise.
We caress the idea of a border where perennial Gypsophila, large bushes
of Monarda, Penstemons and Lavender should group and contrast and
delight and rest the eye.
* * * * *
There is a walk in a wonderful garden not far from here—a garden which
brings a kind of fainting, despairing envy to the soul of Loki’s
Grandmother—where Lavender and Penstemons make the happiest possible
effect. The walk itself is a thing of beauty; through woodland on one
side, the border in question runs quite a long way against a low parapet
on the other. Below this parapet the ground slopes down, and at the end
of the walk there is so abrupt a fall that it seems almost to end in
mid-air with a vast panorama far beneath. And on the side of the flowery
border a shelving precipice falls away out of which giant stone pines
hang against the distant horizon. The Lavender has grown to a hedge, and
the varying soft pinks of the Penstemons run vividly against its
mistiness.
Would that walk, and that border, and that view, were ours!
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