I felt I could hardly thank my cook sufficiently for his kind thought. There Auguste stood in irreproachable white linen cap and coat. No prince could have believed that he could offer a more splendid gift, as he repeated, with a theatrical wave of his hand, “Madame peut tout copier.” And then added, with an indulgent smile, “Madame est malade, cela lui fera un plaisir énorme.”
I rose to the occasion and said, as “bonne ménagère.” I found it difficult to express my gratitude.
At this Auguste retired a step, and then, with a courtly bow, exclaimed grandly, his eye upon my embroidery which lay near on a chair, “Il faut que les artistes se consolent dans les jours de tristesse,” and so saying, vanished to reign over his own kingdom.
A little later Burbidge came in to see me. In his hand he held a bunch of roses, neatly tied with green matting, a new fad of mine. Amongst the roses that he had brought me, I found a lovely Caroline Testout, of great size and beauty, of a delicate pink with a glow of richer colour in the centre. Then there was an open bud of charming Thérèse Levet, and a full blown splendour of Archiduchesse Marie Immaculata, with its curious red-brick tints; and two or three blossoms of the dear old-fashioned Prince Camille de Rohan of a deep, brownish crimson hue.
“Here’s a few on ’em, just a sprinklin’,” said Burbidge. “But oh, ’tis a pity as yer can’t see ’em growin’! The sop of rain has brought ’em out, like the sunshine brings out chickens from under a hen’s wing. They be popping and peering in the garden, as if they had the Lord Almighty to look at ’em Hisself.”
“Perhaps He is,” I said with a smile.
To this Burbidge didn’t give direct assent, but like a true Shropshire man, he declared that it was his belief, if the Lord was on earth, it might pleasure Him to see the place, for the whole of the red-walled garden was a garland of flowers. “There be irises, and roses, and peonies; and it be hard to tell the colours. There be all sorts and all shades, most like a glass window in the Abbey Church at Shrewsbury.” And Burbidge added, with that true sense of poetry that belongs to the peasant, that “the Wrekin doves they be cooing and fluttering round the firs, same as in a real poem.”
A POSY OF ROSES
Burbidge laid the bunch of roses close beside me, for they had slipped off the sofa whilst he was talking. Before going, he vouchsafed the information that there be a Reine d’Angleterre three parts in blow. He pronounced the French words strangely, but I understood from many talks what was meant in Gallic, and that he would bring it to me. “And ’tis a great deal, I think, the sight of a new rose—leastways, ’tis to me; for it allus pleases, and it never can be uncivil like many Christians,” he said. After which profound dictum, my good old gardener hobbled off. These kind gifts and little attentions touched me. I appreciated much Auguste’s thoughtful kindness, and Burbidge’s pity for my misfortune, for it was his invariable rule that a “first blow,” must show itself first in a garden. “Don’t ’e interfere with the Lord’s system,” he once said to me, when I wanted to gather a new tree peony. “Let it pleasure itself first time in the garden, and arter yer may please yerself.”
I smelt my bunch of roses, the fragrance was delicious, soft and sweet, and only to be fully appreciated by dipping one’s nose well into the centre of the sweetest.