The nightingales were very beautiful in our garden at Trieste, and after dinner, it being unusually fine weather in September and October, we used to sit out on our verandah smoking, taking our coffee, looking at the beautiful moonlit sea and mountains, and the moon and stars through a large telescope that stood there for the purpose, And one day I found the following on the margin of his journal:—
"THE NIGHTINGALE.
"'Sweet minstrel of the younger year,
Small Orpheus of the woody hill,
Say why far more delight my soul
That artless note, that untaught trill,
Than all that tuneful art can find
To charm the senses of mankind?'
"'Listen!' the Nightingale replied.
'The notes which thus thy feelings move
By perfect Nature were supplied,
To praise the Lord and sing of love.
Hath Art ne'er taught mankind to sing
High praises of a meaner thing?'"
The End.
Let me recall the last happy day of my life. It was Sunday, the 19th of October, 1890. I went out to Communion and Mass at eight o'clock, came back and kissed my husband at his writing. He was engaged on the last page of the "Scented Garden," which had occupied him seriously only six actual months, not thirty years, as the Press said. He said to me, "To-morrow I shall have finished this, and I promise you that I will never write another book on this subject. I will take to our biography." And I said, "What a happiness that will be!" He took his usual walk of nearly two hours in the morning, breakfasting well. People came to tea; he had another walk in the garden, when the robin incident occurred.
"How oft we've wandered by the stream,
Or in the garden's bound,
Our hands and hearts together join'd;
Pure happiness have found!
But now we linger there no more,
Beside the woods or burn,
And all that I can utter now
Is, 'When wilt thou return?'"
That afternoon we sat together writing an immense number of letters, which, when we had finished, I put on the hall table to be posted on Monday morning. Each letter breathed of life and hope and happiness, for we were making our preparations for a delightful voyage to Greece and Constantinople, which was to last from the 15th of November to the 15th of March. We were to return to Trieste from the 15th of March till the 1st of July. He would be a free man on the 19th of March, and those three months and a half we were to pack up, make our preparations, wind up all our affairs, send our heavy baggage to England, and, bidding adieu to Trieste, we were to pass July and August in Switzerland, arrive in England in September, 1891, look for a little flat and a little cottage, unpack and settle ourselves to live in England.
We had now been back in Trieste six weeks from Maloja, in the Engadine, and during those six weeks my husband did several things, with a difference that would have struck me, except for his improved health and spirits. How we should break our hearts could we see ahead, and yet how one regrets not seeing!
"What part has death or has time in him
Who rode life's lists as a God might ride?"
——Swinburne.
During this time, in spite of his having his Agnostic-talking tendencies worse upon him than ever, at table and in company, in privacy he used to lock our outer doors for a short while twice daily and pray. Our six rooms ran round in a square, cut off from the rest of the house, and as his bedroom and mine were corner rooms, I had, quite accidentally, a large full-length mirror in my corner, that gave me command of three rooms, including the chapel, so that though he was alone I could see him. And I did not alter it, lest he might have a seizure of any sort. In the chapel was a large crucifix, and he would at times come in, and remain before it for half an hour together, and go away with moist, sad eyes, and sometimes look over the books or papers.