A Reaping

by E. F. Benson

Thereafter we staggered across the Adriatic, over the ridge and furrow of a grey and unquiet sea, till we found quiet below the heel of Italy. Soon to the south-west the horizon lay in skeins of smoke, and it was not for hours afterward that the cone of Etna, uprearing itself, showed whence the trouble came. Narrower grew the straits, till we passed out beside Messina, and for the pillar of smoke which Etna had raised all day we sighted Stromboli, a pillar of fire by night. Next morning we were in the narrows between Corsica and Sardinia, and saw the little villages, tiny and toy-like, in the island whence sprang the brain that was to light all Europe with the devouring flame of its burning. If the dead return, I think it is not in Elba of St. Helena, nor even in the pomp of Paris, nor on the battle-field, that we must guess that Napoleon wanders. He sees the impotence of his destructive and untiring genius. The lines of his new map of Europe have been gently defaced again by time, and he sits quiet enough by the little house, where still the descendants of his old nurse dwell, and sees the innocent campaigning of her grandchildren in their childish games. And when the time comes for unflinching justice to be done to that unflinching spirit, who spared none, nor had pity so long as by any sacrifice the realization of his ruthless imaginings came true, will not the spirit of his old nurse stand advocate, and remind Justice that, even in the midst of his gigantic schemes, he remembered her who had given him suck, and provided for her maintenance? Somewhere in that iron soul was the soft touch of childish days: he was kind who was so terrible, and that pen so unfacile and so bungling that he hated to write at all put a little paragraph of scarcely decipherable words to his will that showed (what would otherwise have been incredible) how a certain gentleness of heart underlay the iron.

Though all these sights—the chimney of Etna, the furnace of Stromboli, the island of Napoleon—were but milestones, passed before, to show us now how far we were travelling from the magic land, yet each brought us nearer in time and space to the magic of home, and of the day, yet unnamed, which must already, like some peak of an unknown range, be beginning to rear itself up in the foreground of the future.

Then, as the magnet of Greece grew more remote, the magnet of home gained potentiality, until there was no question which was the stronger. We had intended—that is to say, more than half intended—to stay a day or two in Paris; instead, we fled through Paris as if it had been a spot plague-ridden, meaning to pass the night in London. But even as we scurried from Gare de Lyon to Gare du Nord, so, too, we scurried from Victoria to Waterloo, with intention now fully declared to get down to the dear home without pause. As far as I remember, we sustained life on thick brown tea and a Sahara of currant-cake; but at the end there was the snorting motor waiting at the station, and a mile of sleeping streets, cheered by the vision of Mr. Holmes going somewhere in a neat Inverness cape and buttoned boots, a mile of spring-scented country road, and then the little house, discreet behind its shrubbery, where was the rose-garden, among other things, and among other things the nursery.

The night was very warm, and lit by the full moon of April, so, after we had dined, and run like two children from room to room in the house, first to greet all the precious things of home, with Fifi, like an animated corkscrew, performing prodigies of circular locomotion round us, we found that there was still a large part of home to greet, and so went out into the garden, to see what April had brought forth there. No sudden riot or conflagration of leaf and flower, like that which we had seen blaze over the lower slopes of Pentelicus, was there, but April day by day had done his gentle work, so that where we had left a bed still winter-naked it was now mapped out into the claims of the plants. To-morrow there would be disputes to be settled, for the day-lily had pegged out more than her share, and between her and the iris a delphinium would be crowded out of existence. But every plant—such is our rule—may claim all the ground it can get until the end of April; then come round the judges of the court of appeal, and if any plant distinctly says, ‘I have not room to grow, because of these encroachers,’ his appeal, if he promises at all well, is usually upheld, and the encroacher is shorn of his unreasonable encroachments. Even by the moonlight it was quite certain that the court of appeal had a heavy day in front of it: there were lawsuits regarding land to settle, which would require most careful adjustment, for the court hates depriving a rightful possessor of that which his vigor has appropriated. On the other hand, the slender aristocracy of the bed (for the aristocrat grows upwards rather than sideways) must not be elbowed out of existence. One plant only is allowed to do exactly what it pleases and when it pleases—the pansy, which is ‘for thoughts’ that are always sweet, and so may roam unchecked and welcome, for who would set limits to the wanderings of so kindly and humble a soul? It but touches the ground, too (to be absolutely honest, I must confess that this has something to do with the liberties we give it), as a moth still hovering and on the wing draws from the flower the sustenance it needs. It does not, so to speak, sit down to make a square meal, or burrow with searching roots deep into the earth, and drain it of all its treasure, but it is ever on the move, like some bright-eyed beggar-girl, to whom none but the churlish would grudge the wayside halfpenny. She will not linger and settle and sponge on your bounty, but be off again elsewhere next moment, just turning to you a smiling face, and whispering a murmured thanks in the bright language of flowers. So she is privileged to wander even in the sacred territory of the roses, where I hope she has already wandered wide. There, however, we did not penetrate to-night, for it and the meadow we kept for the morrow. But on the top margin of the field against the sky I saw shapes that were unmistakable. To-morrow our hearts will go dancing with the daffodils.

But to-night we are content with the thoughts that the pansies have given us, and can even forgive Milton for speaking of them as ‘freaked with jet.’ Freaked with jet!—when Ophelia had said that they were ‘for thoughts’! But, then, Milton speaks of the ‘well-attired woodbine,’ which is almost as bad. Imagine looking at pansies, and finding it incumbent on one to say: ‘I perceive they are freaked with jet’! But, as one who had the highest appreciation of Milton remarked, to appreciate Milton is the reward of consummate scholarship, which was certainly a very pleasant reflection for himself, and perhaps if I were a better scholar I should think with appreciation of the pansy ‘freaked with jet.’ As it is, I merely conclude that Milton was flower-blind—a sad affliction.

Helen is absolutely ultra-Japanese in her observance of the flower-festivals, of which she marks some dozen of red-letter days in the year. They cannot, of course, be celebrated on any fixed day, since, owing to the vagaries of climate, there might not be a single lily to be seen, for instance, this year on the actual day which was Lily-day a year ago. She waits instead, like the Japanese, until the particular flower is in the zenith of its blossoming, and then proclaims the festival. Other flowers, naturally, sometimes are at their best on the red-letter day of another, but this, as she observes, is canonically correct, since St. Simon and St. Jude, and St. Philip and St. James, are celebrated together. I was not, therefore, the least surprised next morning, when, after a short excursion to the garden, she came in to breakfast, saying:

‘It is Daffodil-day, and the day of its sisters of the spring.’

‘But we had the sisters of the spring in Greece,’ said I.

‘Yes; that is the advantage of going to Greece: the Greek calendar is different to ours. We had Easter Day before we started, and another Easter Day when we got there. Besides, it was Anemone-day, and the day of its sisters of the spring. The anemone’s sisters were not the same as the daffodil’s.’

This was convincing (even if I needed conviction, which I did not), and Daffodil-day it was.