‘It is a pity to spoil the plant,’ said the woman, who was well known to us, for we had often halted to make purchases from her. ‘Will not another serve equally well?’
You will easily surmise Lamia’s reply. No rose in the world but that one would have satisfied her desire.
‘Come vuole, said the woman (‘be it as you wish’), and she severed the fair flower from its stalk.
‘How much is it?’ I asked, eagerly availing myself of the opportunity to make dear Lamia a parting gift from the City of Flowers.
‘Don’t trouble about it,‘ said the woman, ‘you can pay some other time.’
‘But there will be no other time,’ said Lamia, ‘for we are going away for good and all.’
‘Dunque, non si paga. Addio, e buon viaggio! ‘was the reply. (‘In that case, you must not pay at all. Happy be your journey! Good-bye!’)
If people love their home, there is no wrong time for coming back to it; and, were it not for the delight of returning, I doubt if it would be wise, save under compulsion, ever to leave it. Tacitus asks, Who would quit Italy for Germany, were it not that Germany is his own country? Over English folk, at all worthy of their great descent, the name of England exercises a more enthralling spell even than that of Italy; and the Garden that I love is all the dearer to me because it is thoroughly English. But the moment for returning to it fell out most felicitously; and, gazing on the scene that awaited us, we were instantly weaned from all regret even for the sky and sunshine of Tuscany. Under the broad-trunked, wide-spreading Oak,—Veronica has christened this particular plot of ground the Oak Parlour,—Five O’Clock Tea was waiting for us, and once more we looked on one of those Urns which, I am told, have made the owner’s name a household word in many kindly hearts. I need not say again how happy we had been in our Tuscan villa, and I verily believe that Veronica would contrive to make us comfortable in the desert of Sahara. But it is idle to pretend that all we mean by the word ‘Home’ is to be had save in this, our own island; and there is all the difference in the world between Perfetta and the tearful cameriere who, I suppose, has now returned to his antico mestiere, and is smothering Desdemona before some provincial Tuscan audience, and the Northern handmaidens who, moulded by the genius of Veronica, perform with noiseless celerity every office that can minister to the grace of existence. Do not think me material if I say that that first Five O’Clock Tea in the Oak Parlour after our return was an event in our life; for its charm was compounded of many elements, into which entered the abiding influence of unluxurious domestic refinement. The green antiquity of the oak, the smooth verdure of the lawn, unattainable, I fear, by the services of a shepherd lass and her flock of nibbling sheep, the luxuriance and variety of the flowers, the view, under the oaken branches, of the Manor-House, white with roses from ground to gable, the snowy face of the tablecloth, the glow of the burnished urn, the brightness, the spotlessness, the seemliness of everything, all contributed to the welcome that attended us, and to the pleasure we received from it.
But something more awaited us than the renewal of old delights. Shortly before we started for our six months’ absence, we had decided, after much deliberation, to add, in a modest way, to the home that we had a thousand times declared, in our optimistic fashion, to be already ample for our needs; and the result was now before us. You may easily imagine our anxiety to discern if the decision had been wise or the reverse; for, though we had gone into the plan with a most competent architect to the utmost detail, and though Veronica had brought her practical and tasteful mind to bear upon window and overmantel, hinge and door-plate, moulding and lining-paper, there is always a danger lest instructions should have been misunderstood or imperfectly carried out, or that the instructions themselves were wholly or in part a mistake. We were prepared to be pleased, but also to criticise; but for fault-finding there was, in truth, no possible room. Animated by reverence for what already existed, we had bound architect and builder to certain well-defined lines and curves, prohibiting externally all originality save what is perhaps the best kind of it in these days, pious and humble reproduction of what is already recognised as beautiful. A room, which was originally spoken of as a billiard-room, and which for a brief while retained that designation, though all idea of having a billiard-table in it had been promptly abandoned, and which now is known as the Morning Room, because, as Lamia says, we nearly always sit there of an evening, a new boudoir for Veronica, who has at last a refuge of her own worthy of her beneficent labours, three new sleeping-chambers, and another staircase, composed the new quarter. And will you believe it?—it was already furnished; Veronica having made due preparations and given minute instructions for this end partly before our departure, and partly during our absence. Now, did she triumph over us in the matter of those various purchases in Florence that used to move our ignorant mirth; for everything she had acquired had been sent home in time to be unpacked and placed in the room and the position allotted to it. Thus, at every turn, we were reminded of the Fair City and the bewitching land we had so lately left, and of which, not to be ungrateful, we still talked affectionately even in the hours of our home-coming.