If we had a dwelling for every different mood, a log-house at the top of that Beech ravine would suit us very well in a sunny month of May. Between the great smooth boles of the trees we would want to peep out at the flat wide land, with the rich far woods below, misty in the sunshine; and the distant moors as with the bloom of the grape upon them. We would not want flowers; nothing but that heavenly green of the young leaves against the blue; and the whispering and the swaying of the boughs to cradle our souls; and the thrushes and blackbirds to sing the dawn in and the twilight out! How holy and innocent and loving would one’s mind become after a week in that log hut—a week alone, or with one’s best beloved!
After we came out from that Beech wood we took a wrong turning, and landed ourselves far out on the downs instead of back to our moors. Now, for another mood—say, a warm, still, serene September mood—why not a small stone house in a high hollow of those downs, miles removed from any other human habitation? Just a stone house dumped in the hollow—pale grey, so as not to offend the eye in that stretch of bleached vastness, with a group of Thorns at the back and nothing else, not even a path; only a long way off, the vision of a white ribbon of road, looping and twisting, running to the sea. No flowers but the little wild, stiff, aromatic things that push up through the short turf. Overhead, one or two quite round, white clouds, sailing along the blue, caught by some high current that hardly touches us below—the kind of cloud that you see in an old German print. And all about, as far as the gaze can encompass, nothing but the dip and rise, the scoop and billow of the downs; and the hollows, blue on that wonderful sun-steeped, warm, yet bleached expanse. And the shadows of the clouds, running along across it; and perhaps a lark’s song, somewhere not too close, beaten back to earth from an unseen height of joy; and far, far away, the tinkle of a sheep-bell! Would not one’s soul expand with the grand silence and the glorious wide spaces? One would not want to hear or behold the sea, only to taste the salt of it in every breath. Now does it not seem that up there, sitting outside that stone house, you would touch the prehistoric past? Or, rather, that the great eternity, the never-dying essences of things, would sink into your little passing bit of humanity? Your soul would mirror all infinity.—A place to turn Buddhist in!
A TUSCAN VILLINO
There was a pink Villino on the unusual side of Rome. You looked in upon it through high gates into a tangle of garden, where everything seemed to riot. It had an odd, incongruous tower from which you could surely have a vast prospect of the plains of the Campagna and the Alban mountains beyond. There was an archway in one side of it through which one certainly drove into some inner courtyard of delight. That little habitation you might covet with a covetousness that gave you a pain in your heart. We did.
And outside Florence, too, there was another small house. It had been once a farm. A certain great lady had her spring quarters there, liking the contrast, we suppose, between that and the old Scotch castle where Fate had planted her. We drove to tea with her there ‹early May it was› through the hot, wind-swept, noisy Florentine streets. It was just the time of year when the Iris was flooding the land with its penetrating and yet not sickly sweetness. There never was any scent so perfect. And the small pink roses were flinging themselves over the tops of tall garden walls, as if the prodigal Italian springtide had been at its full and left a foam of bloom behind it. Up, up the mountain road, between uncompromising walls and out into the freer country—and there was the farmhouse! Its garden has left an odd blurred impression on our minds: vaguely—a path bordered by lush grass and gay with Apple trees—there was a storm brewing, and all was black overhead; under the weird sky the delicate blossoms took a curious vividness like minute paintings.
One had to go across a red-brick kitchen to get to the stairs that led to the two long, quaint, cool rooms, in the farther of which the hostess sat.
LANDSCAPE ECSTASY
She had kept the charm of simplicity there. Plain white walls and rather empty spaces, with bits of Italian black oak, and a painting or two; a vase of lilac, a dim missal warmth of colour in the Persian carpets that lay on the bricks—that was the picture. A very pleasant impression those rooms made, with the old great lady in her high-backed chair, clad in flowing black satin and with a white lace that framed a face as fresh as the apple blossom without. The storm broke as we sat there. She was nervous, and so were some of her visitors; therefore she had the wooden shutters closed. Perhaps she was not really frightened, for she was as sturdy a Scotchwoman as ever we beheld, and her bright blue eye was stern in spite of her affability. Perhaps she only compassionated the nerves of her guests. Be it as it may, we sat an hour while the thunder rolled bars of sound over our heads and the wind whistled and the rain hissed and roared down the valley, and the lightning kept a perpetual play between the chinks of the shutters. And though Loki’s Grandma generally gibbers during a thunderstorm, she never enjoyed an hour more, so delightful was her hostess and so fascinating the sense of isolation and strangeness, being thus shut away amid the fury of the elements in a little Italian farmhouse! And when the tempest was grumbling itself off in the distance, the shutters were all thrown back and the doors on the square wooden balcony opened. The air rushed in, vivifying, full of the scent of the earth and charged with ozone and perfumes. We went out on the dripping balcony, and never, oh! never can any of us forget the vision! For below the casa the land dropped away, and it was all vineyards; and they rose and dipped and rose again, a sight no one has ever beheld out of Italy. And beyond were the mountains; and the whole wide valley was filled with mist and all of it was stained rose and crimson from the sunset.