"Is n't it a tangle?" Which it was, and no one could look upon it without keen delight, unless he were a horticultural pedant in whom the appreciation of nature had been killed by parterres. There was some principle of order, and even now, when the Pleasaunce is a wilderness, the traces can be found. A dwarf fruit tree stood at every corner, and between the trees a three-foot border of flowers kept the peas and potatoes in their places. But the borders were one sustained, elaborate, glorified disorder. There were roses of all kinds that have ever gladdened poor gardens and simple hearts—yellow tea roses, moss roses with their firm, shapely buds, monthly roses that bore nearly all the year in a warm spot, the white briar that is dear to north country people, besides standards in their glory, with full round purple blossom. Among the roses, compassing them about and jostling one another, some later, some earlier in bloom, most of them together in the glad summer days, one could find to his hand wall-flowers and primroses, sweet-william and dusty-miller, daisies red and white, forget-me-nots and pansies, pinks and carnations, marigolds and phloxes of many varieties. The confusion of colours was preposterous, and showed an utter want of aesthetic sense. In fact, one may confess that the Lodge garden was only one degree removed from the vulgarity and prodigality of nature. There was no taste, no reserve, no harmony about that garden. Nature simply ran riot and played according to her will like a child of the former days, bursting into apple blossom and laburnum gold and the bloom of peas and the white strawberry flower in early summer, and then, later in the year, weaving garlands of blazing red, yellow, white, purple, round beds of stolid roots and brakes of currant bushes. There was a copper beech, where the birds sang, and from which they raided the fruit with the skill of Highland caterans. The Lodge bees lived all day in this garden, save when they went to reinforce their sweetness from the heather bloom. The big trees stood round the place and covered it from every wind except the south, and the sun was ever blessing it. There was one summer-house, a mass of honeysuckle, and there they sat down as those that had come back to Eden from a wander year.
"Well, Kit?"
"Thank God for our Pleasaunce." And they would have stayed for hours, but there was one other spot that had a fascination for the General neither years nor wars had dulled, and he, who was the most matter-of-fact and romantic of men, must see and show it to his daughter before they ceased.
"A mile and more, Kit, but through the woods and by the water all the way."
Sometimes they went down a little ravine made by a small burn fighting and wearing its way for ages to the Tochty, and stood on a bridge of two planks and a handrail thrown over a tiny pool, where the water was resting on a bed of small pebbles. The oak copse covered the sides of the tiny glen and met across the streamlet, and one below could see nothing but greenery and the glint of the waterfall where the burn broke into the bosky den from the bare heights above. Other times the path, that allowed two to walk abreast if they wished very much and kept close together, would skirt the face of the high river bank, and if you peeped down through the foliage of the clinging trees you could see the Tochty running swiftly, and the overhanging branches dipping in their leaves. Then the river would make a sweep and forsake its bank, leaving a peninsula of alluvial land between, where the geranium and the hyacinth and the iris grew in deep, moist soil. One of these was almost clear of wood and carpeted with thick, soft turf, and the river beside it was broad and shining.
"We shall go down here," said the General, "and I will show you something that I count the finest monument in Perthshire, or maybe in broad Scotland."
In the centre of the sward, with trees just touching it with the tips of their branches, was a little square, with a simple weather-beaten railing. And the General led Kate to the spot, and stood for a while in silence.
"Two young Scottish lassies, Kate, who died two hundred years ago, and were buried here, and this is the ballad—
"'Bessie Bell and Mary Grey
They were twa bonnie lassies,
They biggit a hoose on yonder brae
And theikit it ower wi' rashes.'"
Then the General and Kate sat down by the river edge, and he told her the deathless story,—how in the plague of 1666 they fled to this district to escape infection; how a lover came to visit one of them and brought death in his kiss; how they sickened and died; how they were laid to rest beside the Tochty water; and generations have made their pilgrimage to the place, so wonderful and beautiful is love. They loved, and their memory is immortal.