It so happening, I sat by the Stone Dog, on a wooden seat, to eat my lunch one day, and dropped into conversation with him, after a bite or two, in the most natural way in the world.
There was the wood in front of us, blue-purple with wild Hyacinths. There was the old cottage behind clothed with rambling Creepers; a carpet of smooth rabbit-worn grass at our feet; a profusion of Primroses, Wind Flowers, and budding trees before our eyes. There was also the enchanting hum of wild bees (like those wild bees Horace knew, that sought the mountain of Matinus in Calabria, and there “laboriously gathered the grateful thyme”) to soothe us in our solitude.
I addressed him then, “Stone Dog,” I said, “this is a very beautiful wood. Nature, laughing at the ghosts of the Bois family, steel-clad, periwigged, or patched, has reclaimed her own.”
The dog answered me never a word but kept his gaze fixed in front of him as if he saw visions in the wood.
“This was a Park once,” said I, “the pleasure-ground of great folk, where they might sport in playful dalliance”—I thought that sounded rather Jacobean.
But, as I looked at him, it seemed, as though he listened for the sound of wheels, and turned his sightless eyes to look for the figure of Lady Perpetua.
“She was very fair,” I said, understanding him, knowing that he had seen many generations drive through the gates he sat to guard. “She would come down to the lodge-keeper’s house to take her breakfast draught of small ale. Poor Lady Perpetua, she was a good house wife, and saw to the pickling of Nasturtium buds, and Lime Tree buds, and Elder roots; and ordered the salting of the winter beef; and looked to it that plenty of Parsnips were stored to eat with it. What sights you must have seen!”
Even as I talked there emanated from the Stone Dog some atmosphere of the past, and we were once more in a fair English park, with its orangeries, and houses of exotic plants, and its maze, and leaden statues, and cut yew trees, and lordly peacocks. The great trees had been cut down, and the timber sold; acres of land, once grazing ground for herds of deer, were ploughed; here, in front of us, was the tangled wood, a corner of what was, once, a wild garden—a fancy of Lady Perpetua’s, no doubt, who loved solitudes, and sentimental poetry:
“I could not love thee, dear, so much;
Loved I not honour more.”