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He dreamed of fair green fields and meadows, of silent lakes bordered with rushes, out of which sprang wild-fowl slowly flapping their broad wings; of forests thick and dark, where on fallen trees the green moss had grown in velvet softness; of mountains lifting their purple tops into the fleecy clouds, and of long, shady country roads winding in and out and about the hills; of lanes bordered with blackberry-bushes and sumac, clematis and wild-rose; of dewy nooks full of ferns; of the songs of birds and the chirp of insects; and it seemed to him that he must put some of all this beauty into some shape of his own creation picture or poem, song or speech; and then came a sudden sharp twinge of pain, and the brightness faded, and the room was dark, and he was hungry, and only poor little Phil, sick and sad and weary and poor.
Thereupon William essayed a ruse he pretended to nibble at something, and then extended his hand as if it held forth a gift of food. "Look, Clem," he said. "Yum-yum! Meat, Clem! Good meat!" For once Clematis was half credulous. He did not advance, but he elongated himself to investigate the extended hand, and the next instant found himself seized viciously by the scruff of the neck.
Almost enclosed by the wild olive, the cactus, the clematis, and the almond-tree, is a very singular and isolated granite rock, called Napoleon's grotto, which seems to have resisted the decomposition which has taken place around. The remains of a small summer-house are visible beneath the rock, the entrance to which is nearly closed by a luxuriant fig-tree.
Thus a spray of clematis would completely obscure Cassiopeia, or blot out with its black pattern myriads of miles of the Milky Way.
And as we went all the rest of the Town hurried out of wide, high, vine-covered doors, down broad, flower-lined walks, and joined us from under bowers of blooming roses, honeysuckle and clematis.
And when the clouds gathered and came the soft, soft falling of the steady spring rain, she loved the interval it afforded for the setting of things in order within, and once more she and Hamish and Fifine and the cat were congregated on the buffalo rug in front of the fire, which had dwindled to an ember kept from meal to meal, to sort treasures brought with them in the small compass of a buffalo horn, seeds now, the seeds of certain simple flowers, a bulb and a root or two, the precious roots of an eglantine and a clematis vine.
Garden-beds of dazzling color lined its gravel walks, and down the middle of it ran a brick pergola, half-hidden in clusters of rambler-rose and purple with starry clematis. At the bottom end of it, between two of its pillars, was slung a hammock containing a shirt-sleeved figure.
How shall I describe, my dear Sophia, the gratification with which I beheld our new home! It is a long, low, white house, covered with roses and clematis, with pleasant windows opening to smooth green lawns, and an air of purity and order within which is peculiar to English homes. Having travelled to Boulogne, I may be allowed to be a judge.
I called her plain Cactus till she was three, and along came a sharp studyin’ the flowers an’ weeds out here, and he ’lowed that Cactus was a boy’s name an’ Cacta was for girls—called it a feeminin tarnation, or somethin’ like that, so we changed it. My second daughter ’ain’t got quite so much of a name. She’s called Clematis.
There was dodging through coal-bins; there was squirming between barrels; there was high jumping and broad jumping, and there was a final aspiring but baffled dash for the top of the cellar stairs, where the door, forgotten by William, stood open. But it was here that Clematis, after a long and admirable exhibition of ingenuity, no less than agility, submitted to capture.
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