Then, with the admirable energy of one who is only
in town for a fleeting fortnight, she raced away to
have tea with a world-faring naval admirer at his
club. Pluralism is a merciful narcotic.
CHAPTER VI
Elaine de Frey sat at ease—at bodily ease—at
any rate—in a low wicker chair placed under
the shade of a group of cedars in the heart of a stately
spacious garden that had almost made up its mind to
be a park. The shallow stone basin of an old
fountain, on whose wide ledge a leaden-moulded otter
for ever preyed on a leaden salmon, filled a conspicuous
place in the immediate foreground. Around its
rim ran an inscription in Latin, warning mortal man
that time flows as swiftly as water and exhorting
him to make the most of his hours; after which piece
of Jacobean moralising it set itself shamelessly to
beguile all who might pass that way into an abandonment
of contemplative repose. On all sides of it a
stretch of smooth turf spread away, broken up here
and there by groups of dwarfish chestnut and mulberry
trees, whose leaves and branches cast a laced pattern
of shade beneath them. On one side the lawn
sloped gently down to a small lake, whereon floated
a quartette of swans, their movements suggestive of
a certain mournful listlessness, as though a weary
dignity of caste held them back from the joyous bustling
life of the lesser waterfowl. Elaine liked to
imagine that they re-embodied the souls of unhappy
boys who had been forced by family interests to become
high ecclesiastical dignitaries and had grown prematurely
Right Reverend. A low stone balustrade fenced
part of the shore of the lake, making a miniature
terrace above its level, and here roses grew in a
rich multitude. Other rose bushes, carefully
pruned and tended, formed little oases of colour and
perfume amid the restful green of the sward, and in
the distance the eye caught the variegated blaze of
a many-hued hedge of rhododendron. With these
favoured exceptions flowers were hard to find in this
well-ordered garden; the misguided tyranny of staring
geranium beds and beflowered archways leading to nowhere,
so dear to the suburban gardener, found no expression
here. Magnificent Amherst pheasants, whose plumage
challenged and almost shamed the peacock on his own
ground, stepped to and fro over the emerald turf with
the assured self-conscious pride of reigning sultans.
It was a garden where summer seemed a part-proprietor
rather than a hurried visitor.
By the side of Elaine’s chair under the shadow
of the cedars a wicker table was set out with the
paraphernalia of afternoon tea. On some cushions
at her feet reclined Courtenay Youghal, smoothly preened
and youthfully elegant, the personification of decorative
repose; equally decorative, but with the showy restlessness
of a dragonfly, Comus disported his flannelled person
over a considerable span of the available foreground.
Copyrights
The Unbearable Bassington from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
