“What a wicked fay it is! You shall come with us next time. We’ll have tea in the woods, stir up ant-heaps, and play at Swiss Family Robinson. Good-bye,” and he carried her with him to the door to take her child’s kiss as the sunlight touched her hair.
Summer on Marley Down was a pageant such as painter’s love. Heather everywhere, lagoons of purple amid the rich green reefs of the rising bracken. Scotch firs towering into mystery against the blue, roofing magic aisles where shadows played on grass like velvet, bluff banks and forest valleys, heather and whortleberry tangling the ground. In the marshy hollows of the down the moss was as some rich carpet from the Orient, gold, green, and bronze. Asphodel grew in these rank green hollows, with the red whorls of the sundew, and the swinging sedge. Everywhere a broad, breezy sky, brilliant with color above a brilliant world.
The palings of the cottage-garden glimmered white between the sombre cypresses, and the dark swell of the fir-wood topped the red of the tiled roof. This nook in Arcady had the charm of a surprise for Murchison, for Catherine had made him promise that he would leave the stewardship to her. She had spent many an hour over at Marley Down, and her year’s allowance from her mother had gone in art fabrics, carpets, and old furniture. Catherine had taken Gwen with her more than once, having sworn the child to secrecy on these solemn motherly trifles, and Gwen had hidden her bubbling enthusiasm even from her father.
“Here we are! Is it not a corner of romance?”
“The place looks lovely, dear.”
“Wait!” and she seemed happily mysterious.
“I can guess your magic. Carry the luggage in, Gage; Dr. Inglis may want you for an hour or two at home.”
He gave his hand to Catherine, and together they passed into the little garden. Murchison looked about him like a man who had put the grim world out of his heart. The peacefulness of the place seemed part of the woodland and the sky. Purple clematis was in bloom, with a white rose over the porch. The beds below the windows were fragrant with sweet herbs, lavender and thyme, rosemary and sage. A crimson rambler blazed up nearly to the overhanging eaves, and there were rows of lilies, milk white, beneath the cypress-trees.
Within, a woman’s careful and happy tenderness welcomed him everywhere. A dozen nooks and corners betrayed where Catherine’s hands had been at work. Flowered curtains at the casements; simple pottery, richly colored, on the window shelves; his favorite books; a great lounge-chair for him before an open window. The place was a dream cottage, brown beamed, brown floored, its walls tinted with delicate greens and reds, old panelling beside the red brick hearths, beauty and quaintness everywhere, flowers in the garden, flowers in the quiet room.
“What a haven of rest!”