There was a second Italian garden at Latimer, a recreation, in the spirit, of the garden of the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, a hill garden, a world of terraces, stone stairways, shaded walks, box hedges, cypresses and cedars, fountains, cascades, great water cisterns. Here was more mystery, deeper shadows, a sadder note. Eve was painting in the lower garden on the day following the rain, when the lights were softer, the foliage fresher, the perfumes more pungent. There was the noise of water everywhere. The sunlight was more partial and more vague, splashing into the open spaces, hanging caught in the cypresses and cedars, touching some marble shape, or glittering upon the water in some pool. Try as she would, Eve felt less impersonal here than in the full sunlight of the upper garden. That other spirit that had sent her to Latimer seemed to follow her up and down the moss-grown stairways, to walk with her through the shadows under the trees. She was more conscious of Canterton than ever. He was the great, grave lord of the place, watching her work with steady eyes, compelling her to paint with a touch that was not all her own.
Sometimes the head gardener, who had tea made for her in his cottage, came and watched her painting and angled for a gossip. He was a superior sort of ancient, with a passion for unearthing the history of plants that had been introduced from distant countries. Canterton’s name came up, and the old man found something to talk about.
“I don’t say as I’m an envious chap, but that’s the sort of life as would have suited me.”
Eve paused at her work.
“Whose?”
“Why, Mr. Canterton’s, Miss.”
“You know Mr. Canterton by name?”
“Know him by name! I reckon I do! Didn’t he raise Eileen Purcell and Jem Gaunt, and bring all those Chinese and Indian plants into the country, and hybridise Mephistopheles? Canterton! It’s a name to conjure with.”
Eve felt an indefinable pleasure in listening to the fame of the man whose work she was learning to share, for it was fame to be spoken of with delight by this old Latimer gardener.
“Mr. Canterton’s writing a book, is he?”