“And it takes a long time to get the water-lilies to grow, because they won’t come anywhere until they are sure you really love them, not just want them for show. It’s the same with the Madonna lilies. And they never make mistakes. You’ve got really to love them. And the water-lilies like bulrushes close at hand for a bodyguard, because the water-lilies are of royal birth. The Water Elementals told Dick all this. And so the lilies grew, and I loved the pink ones best, but he loved the white. And the tops of the beech-trees with the long trunks are where the Earth Elementals say their prayers; they choose trees like that so that the Earth children cannot climb up and disturb them. If you disturb them when they are saying their prayers they get cross, and then the flowers come all wrong. Red roses with a green spike in their hearts, and the lime flowers covered with black. And all that shimmery heat is like it is in the desert, all like that and no green. Only here and there water in a grove of palm-trees. And there is the wood where the Winds live. They will all be at home to-day, resting.”
Ruth held her breath while she listened, and then the voice fell very softly into silence. And quite suddenly there came a sudden shower of big soft tears. They made blurred marks on the lustrous white skin, and she looked at Ruth with dim wet eyes like a child who had been naughty.
Presently she got up and came and sat down on the top of the wall facing the garden.
“Come and sit here too,” she said, patting the bricks beside her. “It’s quite comfy if you put your heels back into the steps. There’s just room for two. We used to watch for Dick coming home from here—I and Fred and the eldest Condor boy. He was killed at Messines—and little Teddy Rawson, the Vicar’s son—he was afraid of almost everything—mice and ferrets—just like a girl—and he died a hero’s death at Gallipoli. And Sybil Rawson—she went as a nurse to Salonica, and was torpedoed coming home, and drowned. Only Fred and I left, and the two youngest Condors.”
Again she fell on silence, and again Ruth held her breath. She feared that any word of hers might break the spell of this return to the past days which were like another life.
“The flowers grow for you too. They are just as wonderful as ever,” Mrs. Riversley went on again, after a little while. “And you have got a blue border. Delphinium, anchusa, love-in-the-mist, and the nemophila—all of them. I wonder how you came to think of that?”
“There were some of the plants still left, and I—somehow I think I guessed.”
“And the birds? Are they still as tame?”
“They were shy at first, but they are beginning to come back.”
“The robins used to fly in and out of the house. And even the swallow and kingfishers used to come quite close to Dick. If I was with him I had to be quite still for a long time before they would come.”