A REFUGE FROM THE HEAT.
There was a little garden, one side enclosed by the house, another by the
studio, and the remaining two by walls, evidently built for the nightly
convenience of promenading cats. There was one pear-tree in the grass-plot
which occupied the centre, and a few small fruit-trees, which, I may now
safely say, never bore any thing, upon the walls. But the last occupant had
cared for his garden; and, when I came to the cottage, it was, although you
would hardly believe it now that my garden is inside the house, a pretty
little spot,--only, if you stop thinking about a garden, it begins at once
to go to the bad. Used although I had been to great wide lawns and park and
gardens and wilderness, the tiny enclosure soon became to me the type of
the boundless universe. The streets roared about me with ugly omnibuses and
uglier cabs, fine carriages, huge earth-shaking drays, and, worse far, with
the cries of all the tribe, of costermongers,--one especially offensive
which soon began to haunt me. I almost hated the man who sent it forth to
fill the summer air with disgust. He always put his hollowed hand to his
jaw, as if it were loose and he had to hold it in its place, before he
uttered his hideous howl, which would send me hurrying up the stairs to
bury my head under all the pillows of my bed until, coming back across the
wilderness of streets and lanes like the cry of a jackal growing fainter
and fainter upon the wind, it should pass, and die away in the distance.
Suburban London, I say, was roaring about me, and I was confined to a few
square yards of grass and gravel-walk and flower-plot; but above was the
depth of the sky, and thence at night the hosts of heaven looked in upon
me with the same calm assured glance with which they shone upon southern
forests, swarming with great butterflies and creatures that go flaming
through the tropic darkness; and there the moon would come, and cast her
lovely shadows; and there was room enough to feel alone and to try to pray.
And what was strange, the room seemed greater, though the loneliness was
gone, when my husband walked up and down in it with me. True, the greater
part of the walk seemed to be the turnings, for they always came just when
you wanted to go on and on; but, even with the scope of the world for your
walk, you must turn and come back some time. At first, when he was smoking
his great brown meerschaum, he and I would walk in opposite directions,
passing each other in the middle, and so make the space double the size,
for he had all the garden to himself, and I had it all to myself; and so I
had his garden and mine too. That is how by degrees I got able to bear the
smoke of tobacco, for I had never been used to it, and found it a small
trial at first; but now I have got actually to like it, and greet a stray
whiff from the study like a message from my husband. I fancy I could tell
the smoke of that old black and red meerschaum from the smoke of any other
pipe in creation.
"You _must_ cure him of that bad habit," said cousin Judy to me once.
It made me angry. What right had she to call any thing my husband did a bad
habit? and to expect me to agree with her was ten times worse. I am saving
my money now to buy him a grand new pipe; and I may just mention here,
that once I spent ninepence out of my last shilling to get him a packet of
Bristol bird's-eye, for he was on the point of giving up smoking altogether
because of--well, because of what will appear by and by.
England is getting dreadfully crowded with mean, ugly houses. If they were
those of the poor and struggling, and not of the rich and comfortable, one
might be consoled. But rich barbarism, in the shape of ugliness, is again
pushing us to the sea. There, however, its "control stops;" and since I
lived in London the sea has grown more precious to me than it was even in
those lovely days at Kilkhaven,--merely because no one can build upon it.
Ocean and sky remain as God made them. He must love space for us, though
it be needless for himself; seeing that in all the magnificent notions of
creation afforded us by astronomers,--shoal upon shoal of suns, each the
centre of complicated and infinitely varied systems,--the spaces between
are yet more overwhelming in their vast inconceivableness. I thank God for
the room he thus gives us, and hence can endure to see the fair face of his
England disfigured by the mud-pies of his children.
There was in the garden a little summer-house, of which I was fond, chiefly
because, knowing my passion for the flower, Percivale had surrounded it
with a multitude of sweet peas, which, as they grew, he had trained over
the trellis-work of its sides. Through them filtered the sweet airs of the
summer as through an Æolian harp of unheard harmonies. To sit there in a
warm evening, when the moth-airs just woke and gave two or three wafts of
their wings and ceased, was like sitting in the midst of a small gospel.
The summer had come on, and the days were very hot,--so hot and changeless,
with their unclouded skies and their glowing centre, that they seemed to
grow stupid with their own heat. It was as if--like a hen brooding over her
chickens--the day, brooding over its coming harvests, grew dull and sleepy,
living only in what was to come. Notwithstanding the feelings I have just
recorded, I began to long for a wider horizon, whence some wind might come
and blow upon me, and wake me up, not merely to live, but to know that I
lived.
One afternoon I left my little summer-seat, where I had been sitting at
work, and went through the house, and down the precipice, into my husband's
study.
"It is so hot," I said, "I will try my little grotto: it may be cooler."
He opened the door for me, and, with his palette on his thumb, and a brush
in his hand, sat down for a moment beside me.
"This heat is too much for you, darling," he said.
"I do feel it. I wish I could get from the garden into my nest without
going up through the house and down the Jacob's ladder," I said. "It is so
hot! I never felt heat like it before."
He sat silent for a while, and then said,--
"I've been thinking I must get you into the country for a few weeks. It
would do you no end of good."
"I suppose the wind does blow somewhere," I returned. "But"--
"You don't want to leave me?" he said.
"I don't. And I know with that ugly portrait on hand you can't go with me."
"He happened to be painting the portrait of a plain red-faced lady, in a
delicate lace cap,--a very unfit subject for art,--much needing to be made
over again first, it seemed to me. Only there she was, with a right to have
her portrait painted if she wished it; and there was Percivale, with time
on his hands, and room in his pockets, and the faith that whatever God had
thought worth making could not be unworthy of representation. Hence he had
willingly undertaken a likeness of her, to be finished within a certain
time, and was now working at it as conscientiously as if it had been the
portrait of a lovely young duchess or peasant-girl. I was only afraid he
would make it too like to please the lady herself. His time was now getting
short, and he could not leave home before fulfilling his engagement.
"But," he returned, "why shouldn't you go to the Hall for a week or two
without me? I will take you down, and come and fetch you."
"I'm so stupid you want to get rid of me!" I said.
I did not in the least believe it, and yet was on the edge of crying, which
is not a habit with me.
"You know better than that, my Wynnie," he answered gravely. "You want your
mother to comfort you. And there must be some air in the country. So tell
Sarah to put up your things, and I'll take you down to-morrow morning. When
I get this portrait done, I will come and stay a few days, if they will
have me, and then take you home."
The thought of seeing my mother and my father, and the old place, came
over me with a rush. I felt all at once as if I had been absent for years
instead of weeks. I cried in earnest now,--with delight though,--and there
is no shame in that. So it was all arranged; and next afternoon I was lying
on a couch in the yellow drawing-room, with my mother seated beside me,
and Connie in an easy-chair by the open window, through which came every
now and then such a sweet wave of air as bathed me with hope, and seemed
to wash all the noises, even the loose-jawed man's hateful howl, from my
brain.
Yet, glad as I was to be once more at home, I felt, when Percivale
left me the next morning to return by a third-class train to his ugly
portrait,--for the lady was to sit to him that same afternoon,--that the
idea of home was already leaving Oldcastle Hall, and flitting back to the
suburban cottage haunted by the bawling voice of the costermonger.
But I soon felt better: for here there was plenty of shadow, and in the
hottest days my father could always tell where any wind would be stirring;
for he knew every out and in of the place like his own pockets, as Dora
said, who took a little after cousin Judy in her way. It will give a notion
of his tenderness if I set down just one tiniest instance of his attention
to me. The forenoon was oppressive. I was sitting under a tree, trying to
read when he came up to me. There was a wooden gate, with open bars near.
He went and set it wide, saying,--
"There, my love! You will fancy yourself cooler if I leave the gate open."
Will my reader laugh at me for mentioning such a trifle? I think not, for
it went deep to my heart, and I seemed to know God better for it ever
after. A father is a great and marvellous truth, and one you can never get
at the depth of, try how you may.
Then my mother! She was, if possible, yet more to me than my father. I
could tell her any thing and every thing without fear, while I confess to a
little dread of my father still. He is too like my own conscience to allow
of my being quite confident with him. But Connie is just as comfortable
with him as I am with my mother. If in my childhood I was ever tempted to
conceal any thing from her, the very thought of it made me miserable until
I had told her. And now she would watch me with her gentle, dove-like eyes,
and seemed to know at once, without being told, what was the matter with
me. She never asked me what I should like, but went and brought something;
and, if she saw that I didn't care for it, wouldn't press me, or offer any
thing instead, but chat for a minute or two, carry it away, and return
with something else. My heart was like to break at times with the swelling
of the love that was in it. My eldest child, my Ethelwyn,--for my husband
would have her called the same name as me, only I insisted it should be
after my mother and not after me,--has her very eyes, and for years has
been trying to mother me over again to the best of her sweet ability.