Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

"I feel as if they had been drowned," Fay persisted: "drowned in their sleep."

"Silly little child," I said, putting my arms round her, "to think that the people themselves were washed away with their poor old bodies! And they weren't even the bodies they were wearing at the time: they were old, worn-out things. And do you think, too, that when the church was washed away, the Spirit that sanctified the church was washed away also?"

Fay nestled up to me. "Of course not."

"No," I continued: "as the Spirit which sanctified this old church still lives and moves and works among men to-day, so the spirits which inhabited those old bodies live and move and work to-day, either here on earth or in other spheres. The temples made with hands, and the temples not made with hands, may pass away and perish; but the Life that transformed them from mere dwelling-places into temples of God abides for ever."

"You really are very comforting, Reggie, and have such beautiful thoughts. I really think you've got an awfully nice mind—much nicer than most people's."

"Not a millionth part as nice as yours, sweetheart."

"Much, much nicer. I really haven't got a very nice one, as minds go. I'm jealous, and selfish and frivolous, and all sorts of horrid things."

I put my hand over the small scarlet mouth. "Hush, hush! I cannot allow anybody—not even you—to say a word against my wife."

The other garden at Bythesea I called, in opposition to the Garden of Sleep, the Garden of Dreams: and a wonderful garden it was. It was as young as the other garden was old, and as carefully tended as the other was neglected. It also was situated on the edge of the cliff, and was more like a garden out of the Arabian Nights which had been called into being in one night by some beneficent Djin, than a garden in matter-of-fact England. It was a garden of infinite variety and of constant surprises, where nothing grew but the unexpected; but where the unexpected flourished in great profusion and luxuriance. It was a most inconsequent garden, and to wander through its changing scenes was like wandering through the exquisite inconsistencies of a delightful dream. The dream began on a velvety lawn, where the velvet was edged with gay flowers and still gayer flowering shrubs, and the blue sea made an effective background. Then it turned into a formal garden, with paved paths between the square grass-plots, and a large fountain in the middle lined with sky-blue tiles, as if a bit of sky had fallen down to earth and had found earth so fascinating that it could not tear itself away again. Then the dream took a more serious turn, and led along sombre cloisters veiled with creepers. But it could not keep serious for long: it soon floated back into the sunlight, and dipped into a sunk garden paved with coral and amethyst, as only pink and purple flowers were allowed to grow therein. Then it changed into a rosery where it was always the time of roses, and where roses red and roses white, roses pink and roses yellow, ran riot in well-ordered confusion. Then the dream took quite another turn, and passed into a Japanese garden of streams and pagodas and strange bright flowers, till the dreamer felt as if he were living on a willow-pattern plate. But he soon came back to England again, and found himself in an ideal fruit-garden, where the pear-trees and the apple-trees were woven into walls and arches and architraves of green and gold. Then a wrought-iron gateway led him still nearer to the heart of England, for there lay a cricket field surrounded by large trees: and beyond that again stretched the grassy alleys and shady paths of dream-land till they culminated in the very centre of the dream—a huge herbaceous border so glorious in its riot of colour that the dreamer's heart leaped up, like Wordsworth's, to behold a rainbow: but this time not a rainbow in the sky, but on the ground.

The house belonging to this wonderful garden was more or less to match. It had begun life quite as a small house: but the magic of the garden had lured it on to venture farther and farther into the enchanted ground, until finally it grew into a very large house indeed. And one could not really blame it for stretching out longing arms and pointing willing feet towards all the beauty which surrounded it: one felt that one would have done exactly the same in its place.