HOME
Years seem to have passed. They have mellowed life into ripeness. The start, and change, and hot ambition of youth seem to have gone by. A calm and joyful quietude has succeeded. That future which still lies before me seems like a roseate twilight, sinking into a peaceful and silent night.
My home is a cottage, near that where Isabel once lived. The same valley is around me; the same brook rustles and loiters under the gnarled roots of the overhanging trees. The cottage is no mock cottage, but a substantial, wide-spreading cottage, with clustering gables and ample shade, such a cottage as they build upon the slopes of Devon. Vines clamber over it, and the stones show mossy through the interlacing climbers. There are low porches, with cozy armchairs, and generous oriels, fragrant with mignonette, and the blue blossoming violets.
The chimney stacks rise high and show clear against the heavy pine trees, that ward off the blasts of winter. The dovecote is a habited dovecote, and the purple-necked pigeons swoop around the roofs in great companies. The hawthorn is budding into its June fragrance along all the lines of fence, and the paths are trim and clean. The shrubs—our neglected azaleas and rhododendrons chiefest among them—stand in picturesque groups upon the close-shaven lawn.
The gateway in the thicket below is between two mossy old posts of stone; and there is a tall hemlock flanked by a sturdy pine for sentinel. Within the cottage the library is wainscoted with native oak, and my trusty gun hangs upon a branching pair of antlers. My rod and nets are disposed above the generous bookshelves; and a stout eagle, once a tenant of the native woods, sits perched over the central alcove. An old-fashioned mantel is above the brown stone jambs of the country fireplace, and along it are distributed records of travel, little bronze temples from Rome, the pietro duro of Florence, the porcelain busts of Dresden, the rich iron of Berlin, and a cup fashioned from a stag’s horn, from the Black Forest by the Rhine.
Massive chairs stand here and there, in tempting attitude; strewed over an oaken table in the middle are the uncut papers and volumes of the day, and upon a lion’s skin, stretched before the hearth, is lying another Tray.
But this is not all. There are children in the cottage. There is Jamie—we think him handsome—for he has the dark hair of his mother—and the same black eye, with its long, heavy fringe. There is Carry—little Carry I must call her now—with a face full of glee and rosy with health; then there is a little rogue some two years old, whom we call Paul—a very bad boy—as we tell him.