This fourth day of July brings us the third of the rain and thunder squalls which have followed the great drought.
Japhet says, relaxing to something approaching a smile, that he doesn’t see why this should not end by being a nice garden, and that the earth is in very good heart.
Dear English earth, it has need to be in good heart! Who knows what it may yet have to bear and give?
The Villino garden wears the war-time stamp, at least to its owners’ eye! The Signora, who has always hitherto plunged at a horticultural list the moment there was a gap in her borders that needed filling or a mistake that needed repairing, which could not be done to her sense of perfection “out of stock,” has had to teach economy to wait on necessity, and ingenuity on both. The result is not really gratifying. In all her long experience economy has never been gratifying in any branch of life. But even if the money were there for extravagance—which it isn’t—thrift has become a positive instead of a negative virtue.
“Thou shalt not spend” is now nearly as urgent a commandment as “Thou shalt not steal.”
It has set her mind to work more and more, however, upon the desirability of permanence in the garden.
In the borders of the terraces round the house she has decided to put a foot-deep edging of Mrs. Simkins pinks. These are adorable in their time of bloom, and the grey-green foliage is tidy, and a pretty bit of colour all the year round.
This year the lobelia, scantily planted, and the climbing geraniums, pathetically subdivided, will take considerable time before forming the show of flower and foliage without which the Villino garden is a failure. But it is a very good thing for individuals as well as nations to be forced to stop and examine their manner of life. Hideous as the struggle is—dead loss of life and happiness and money—good comes out of the evil at many points. Not the least beneficial lesson is that which teaches us now what an extraordinary amount of money and energy one has frittered away by easy-going ways, the amount of items one can put down in a household without being the worse—rather, indeed, the better! Even in a little household, what waste, what excess, what follies of mere show! And if this seems a flat contradiction to the remark upon economy passed a little while ago, let it be noted that conscience and inclination are for ever waging war, and that conscience, as is proper, must have the last word. Moreover, once the domination of conscience is established, the results are, in nine cases out of ten, surprisingly bearable. Frugality combines very well with refinement, and simplicity with dignity. One can be as happy with a three-course lunch and a three-course supper-dinner as one was with an endless array of dishes—those dishes which took so much time and material to prepare, and were so often barely touched! The contents disappeared—thrown away, perhaps, or, what was certainly the case in our household, disposed of as hors d’œuvres between the dining-room and the pantry.
“Why does your butler always come in chewing?” asked an observant relative.